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MORAVIAN MISSIONS 



TWELVE LECTURES 



BY 



AUGUSTUS C. THOMPSON, D.D. 



AUTHOR OF "THE EETTER LAND " "MORNING HOURS IN PATMOS" 
"THE MERCY SEAT" ETC 



< NOV P2 1882J 

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NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1882 



■ T5- 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



Copyright by 
A. C. THOMPSON". 

1882. 



beacon HDre00: 

THOMAS TODD, STEREOTYPER, 
BOSTON. 



TO 

The Church of the United Brethren, 
on the third jubilee 

OF 

THEIR FIRST FOREIGN MISSION, 

Jttgttst 21, 1882, 

THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 

OF 

THE MISSION TO ST. THOMAS. 



PEEFACE. 



The following Lectures form one of the courses on For- 
eign Missions delivered at the Theological Seminary, An- 
dover, during the years 1877-1880, and to the Theological 
Department of the Boston University, 1882. 

The literature of the several subjects is added with con- 
siderable fullness ; one reason being that American and Eng- 
lish readers have less acquaintance with this department of 
missionary literature than with many others. As the Mora- 
vian missions are conducted chiefly by Germans, it is natural 
that various authorities in their language should appear in 
the list. The works cited differ greatly in value ; but by 
an ample citation the author desires to aid inquirers who 
may wish to go over the same ground, in part or wholly, 
which he has himself traversed. A perusal of these works, 
or any considerable portion of them, can hardly fail to foster 
the sentiment of Count Zinzendorf: "The whole earth is 
the Lord's ; men's souls are his ; I am debtor to all." 



CONTENTS. 



Lecture I. The Moravians. Pages 3-37. 

Herrnhut — The Cemetery — Berthelsdorf — Evening Service — 
Doctrinal Belief — Church Polity — Three Orders — Disci- 
pline and Spirit — Ritual — Church Festivals — Education 

— Bohemia — Early Martyrs — Seventeenth Century Perse- 
cution — Comenius — Revival — The Exodus — Eounding of 
Herrnhut — Providential Designs. 

Lecture II. Count Zinzendorf. Pages 41-75. 

Great Men — Zinzendorf s Parentage — Early Piety — Academic 
Course — Early Travels — Choice of Position — Counselor 
and Organizer — Ordination and Ministry — Sifting Period 

— Zinzendorf and Wesley — Authorship — Characteristics 
and Habits — Misunderstood and Calumniated — Ruling 
Motives — Early Missionary Interest — Matured Interest 

— First Mission — Titled Christians. 

Lecture ILL Mission to the West Indies. Pages 79-123. 

Dober and Nitschmann — West India Islands — St. Thomas — 
Self-support — Imprisonment — Hindrances — St. Croix — 
Mortality — Cornelius — St. John — Jamaica — Mistakes — 
Spiritual Fruits — Emancipation — St. Christopher's — An- 
tigua — The Gospel Efficient — Barbados — Tobago — Slav- 
ery — Moravian Philanthropy. 

Lecture IV. Missions to South and Central America. 

Pages 127-171. 

Guiana — The Inhabitants — Beginnings in Berbice — Opposi- 
tion — On the Saramacca — On the Corentyne — Bush Ne- 

(vii) 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

groes — Arabi — Bambey — Two Trophies — Sommelsdyke 

— Present Condition — Existing Embarrassments — Individ- 
ual Cases — Mosquito Coast — Inhabitants — Government 

— The Mission — Caribbean Sea — Moral Devastation — 
Slave Trade — Amelioration. 

Lecture V. Mission to Greenland. Pages 175-213. 

Zinzendorf at Copenhagen — Offer and Acceptance — Outset — 
Greenland — Icebergs — The Eskimos — Their Language — 
Habits and Character — Eeligion — Moravian Beginnings — 
Scarcity — Eirst Conversion — Power of the Cross — Spirit- 
ual Coincidences — Spiritual Experience — Moral Earnest- 
ness — Gratifying Tokens — Privation and Peril — Statis- 
tics and Results. 

Lecture VI. Mission to Labrador. Pages 217-263. 

The Country r— Nascopies and Eskimos — Ehrhardt — Jens Ha- 
ven — Mikak — Permanent Establishment — Embarrass- 
ments — Personal Perils — Literature — Converts — Female 
Converts — Other Classes — Revivals — Statistics and Re- 
sults — Hindrances — The Missionaries — Missionary Navi- 
gation — The Harmony — The Eskimo Future. 

Lecture VII. Missions to North-American Indians. 

Pages 267-305. 

The Aborigines — Their Language — Religion — Early Missions 

— Moravians in Georgia — At Shekomeko — In Connecticut 

— Banishment — In Pennsylvania — Algonquins and Iroquois 

— Mission to the Delawares — Homes of Missionaries — 
Hecke welder — Zeisberger — Hardships and Dangers — Lit- 
erary Labors. 

Lecture VIII. North-American Indians — Concluded. 

Pages 309-341. 

Distinguished Visitors — Progress in Civilization — Religious Re- 
vivals — Native Assistants — Heathen Preachers — Power 
of Truth — Christian Living — Culminating Period — Indian 
Character — Numerous Removals — Massacres — Slaughter 
at Gnadenhutten — Resume — Later Labors. 



CONTENTS. IX 

Lecture IX. Missions to South Africa. Pages 345-377. 

The Continent of Africa — Dilatory Development — Slavery — 
Primitive Christianity — The Moravian Schmidt — The Hot- 
tentots — The Solitary Missionary — Dutch Administration 

— Schmidt Expelled — Mission Eenewed — Opposition Re- 
newed — Growth — Experiences of Converts — Christian 
Deportment. 

Lecture X. South Africa — Concluded. Pages 381-411. 

South Africa — Features, Productions — Karroos — Outside Wit- 
nesses — Lazar House — The Bushmen — Commandoes — 
Western Mission — Kafir Tribes — Eastern Mission — " Irre- 
claimable Savages " — Results — Hostile Critics — Mere Civ- 
ilization — Patient Waiting. 

Lecture XL Mission to Australia. Pages 415-451. 

Australia — The Flora — The Eauna — Colonization — Aborig- 
ines — Their Language and Social Grade — Moravian Be- 
ginnings — Ebenezer and Ramahy uck — Special Hindrances 

— Other Missions — Failures Unavoidable — Decay of Abo- 
rigines — Christianization Effected — Civilization Inade- 
quate — Not Doomed. 

Lecture XII. Resume and Characteristics. Pages 455- 

488. 

Mission in Thibet — Unsuccessful Missions — The Diaspora — In 
Bohemia — Early Evangelistic Spirit — An Integral Ele- 
ment — Growth — Aims and Methods — Comity — Readiness 
for Service — Unostentatious Habits — Cheerfulness — Fru- 
gality — Literary Labors — Devotional Habits — Providen- 
tial Preservation — Aid and Estimates — Influence of Ex- 
ample. 

Literature of the Subjects. Pages 491-510. 



LECTURE I. 



THE MORAVIANS. 



THE MORAVIANS. 



The Moravians — who are they, and where 
are they found? 

We betake ourselves to Central Europe. A 
train from Dresden, on the Saxon-Silesian rail- 
way, soon brings us into Upper Lusatia. Thirty 
miles, and we are at Bautzen, where Napoleon 
repulsed the allied and Prussian forces in 1813. 
Seven miles farther on we pass the village of 
Hochkirch, where one of the bloodiest engage- 
ments in the wars of Frederick the Great was 
fought (1758). At Lobau, still farther east, a 
branch line diverges southward, and we soon 
reach the place of our destination, about fifty 
miles from Dresden. Herrnhut, the denomina- 
tional centre of the United Brethren, is a village 
of only one thousand inhabitants, an abode of 
order, simplicity and neatness. An almost Sab- 
bath quiet pervades the place. The style of 
building is uniform and unostentatious; every- 
thing indeed is plain ; everywhere, however, are 
tokens of comfort, but no signs of abject poverty. 
We visit the Brethren's House, 1 a building set 

1 An inscription over the outside door reads : Das erste Haus 
von Herrnhut; erbaut im Jahre 1722. 

(3) 



4 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. i 

apart for unmarried male members of the Com- 
munity, where thirty of them have a comfortable 
home, with a large apartment for morning and 
evening worship. Here too are facilities for man- 
ual labor. We find several aged and disabled 
missionaries returned from foreign service. We 
next visit the Sisters' House, a larger and more 
imposing establishment, where are a hundred 
unmarried women, devoting themselves to vari- 
ous kinds of industry, especially needlework. 
Great neatness and cheerfulness reign here. Do 
these establishments suggest the thought of mon- 
asticism ? If so, it is an unauthorized suggestion ; 
for no vows are taken, and there is entire liberty 
on the part of inmates, to withdraw whenever 
they please, the arrangement being purely social 
and economical. 

Turning to the Manor House, a spacious build- 
ing that holds the Archives, we are shown through 
a suite of rooms hung with portraits of distin- 
guished Moravians; where also is the Library 
containing an accumulation of manuscript treas- 
ures, among which are about eight thousand 
biographies of deceased members of the Moravian 
community. Here is a manuscript volume x in 
John Huss's handwriting, well on toward five 

1 We shall also be shown an old Hebrew Bible once belong- 
ing to Luther, which Zinzendorf obtained at Wittenberg, and in 
which are placed sundry manuscripts of Luther, Melancthon 
(who here spells his name Melanchios), Bugenhagen, Cruciger, 
and other Reformers, written in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. 



ibct. io THE CEMETERY. 5 

hundred years old, and other valuable works in 
the Bohemian language. 

A shaded avenue takes us to the Cemetery. 
Over the entrance, on the outside, is this inscrip- 
tion ; " Jesus is risen from the dead; " and on the 
inside, " He is become the first fruits of them that 
sleep." The nearest grave on the left is that of 
Christian David, whose name has an honored place 
in Moravian history. The memorial stones, fac- 
ing the east, small and recording only names and 
dates, lie in straight lines, flat upon the ground, 
as in all other Moravian places of burial, like Jew- 
ish gravestones in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and 
like those around the Cathedral in Glasgow. The 
hill, on the slope of which this shaded " Court of 
Peace " is situated, bears the name of Hutberg, 
whose summit is a rock crowned with an observa- 
tory. From that commanding point one enjoys a 
wide view over the Moravian domain, and south- 
ward far away to the rampart of mountains which 
separates this land of Protestant freedom from the 
territory of intolerant Austria. 

Close by the base of the Hutberg runs an ave- 
nue from the village of Herrnhut to Berthelsdorf, 
lined with linden trees, the foliage so dense that 
the sun can scarcely shine through. We will pass 
down that charming slope of a thousand feet in 
the mile, which brings us to the hamlet of Berth- 
elsdorf . We visit the large stone building which is 
now the official residence of several members of the 



b MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. i. 

Elders' Conference, one apartment serving as their 
chapel for daily services ; another as their Council 
Chamber, hung with portraits of men eminent in 
the Unitas Fratrum. There, around a table, they 
hold not less than three sessions every week. 
Scores of letters are received weekly from differ- 
ent quarters of the world, and the interests of the 
whole body, particularly of their foreign missions, 
are discussed. Here is the center and head of the 
Moravians. One department of the Board man- 
ages the educational work, elementary, collegiate 
and theological; another conducts the various 
financial undertakings, trades and the like, which 
help to support the church work ; a third has 
specially to do with foreign missions; and a fourth 
is practically charged with the spiritual interests 
of the communion. 

We would not leave this village of Berthelsdorf 
without paying our respects to members of the 
Elders' Conference, at their unpretending and 
well ordered homes. Here, for instance, is Bishop 
Croger, author of a history of the Ancient Unitas 
Fratrum, in two volumes, and the history of the 
Renewed Church, in three volumes, the latest and 
most valuable of that class of Moravian works. 1 
Near by is Bishop Levin Theodore Reichel, 2 one of 

1 A yet more scholarly and elaborate work in that depart- 
ment is now in preparation by Bishop Edmund de Schweinitz, 
of Bethlehem, Pa. 

2 Since deceased. 



lect.i.] EVENING SERVICE. 7 

the three men in the immediate neighborhood bear- 
ing this name, and holding the same office, a native 
of Pennsj^lvania, the first editor of the American 
Tract Society's Grerman Messenger, who has 
executed the drawings, maps and valuable mis- 
sionary atlas illustrating the Brethren's foreign 
work. Other able and excellent men are in the 
neighborhood. The manners of the place are not 
marked by stiffness, though there is a certain ak 
of formality and reserve. The Moravians as a 
body share in the emotional temperament of 
Southern and Middle Germany. They exhibit a 
sanctified Gremicthlichkeit, a word for which our 
temperament and our language hardly supply an 
exact equivalent. The little tinge of that man- 
nerism which has helped to keep them' in due sep- 
aration from the world, and has helped them to 
maintain their integrity of sentiment and of life, 
does not materially check the cheery ingenuous- 
ness of social intercourse. Birthday celebrations, 
for example, are very delightful. The German 
custom of salutation at meals, before sitting down 
to the table and after rising, is retained, the host 
and hostess giving a cordial right hand and a cus- 
tomary good wish. 1 

Just before evening the bell at Herrnhut strikes 
for service in the village church, and we take our 
seats there, males and females apart. The minis- 

1 Ein gesegnete Mahlzeit! and Ich wiinsche wohl gespeist zu 
haben ! 



8 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.i. 

ter who presides commences, at least he did on 
the occasion when I was present, with Luther's 
famous hymn : r 

• " A castle is our God, a tower, 

A shield and trusty weapon." 

Right heartily do the congregation join in that 
grand old lyric. Then follows an account of the 
Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran Protestant 
Creed of thirty articles adopted at the Diet of 
Augsburg, 1530, because the day, June 25th, is 
the anniversary of that event, and it is one of the 
Memorial Days usually noticed in this way by the 
Brethren. 

What now is the religious belief of the Unitas 
Fratrum? 2 What their culture and characteris- 
tics ; and whence came they ? Only in the light 
shed from these points can we rightly read the 
history of their foreign missions. As regards doc- 
trinal belief, they have repeatedly avowed their 
substantial agreement with other evangelical 

1 Ein' feste Burg ist unset Gott, 
Ein y gute Wehr unci Woffen. 

2 To the following articles of belief they adhere with a good 
deal of uniformity and firmness : The total depravity of human 
nature ; the love of God who has " chosen us in Christ before 
the foundation of the world,'' and " who gave his only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life ; " the real Godhead and real manhood of Christ, 
through whose atonement alone we receive the forgiveness of 
sins; the Holy Spirit graciously working in us the knowledge of 
sin, faith in Jesus, and the witness of adoption ; and the fruits of 
faith, indispensable as evidences of a living principle within. 



lect.i.j DOCTKISTAL BELIEF. 9 

churches. Like all such denominations they 
accept the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God, 
the sufficient and only authoritative rule of relig- 
ious faith and practice. Moravian literature, 
prose as well as poetry, does not give great prom- 
inence to the demands of God's law, nor to future 
retribution ; but regarding the person and offices 
of our Redeemer the Moravian pulpit and press 
are commendably full. " The great theme of our 
preaching," say they, " is Jesus Christ, in whom 
we have the grace of the Son, the love of the 
Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost. 
The word of the Cross, which bears testimony of 
Christ's voluntary offering of himself to suffer and 
to die, and of the rich treasures of divine grace 
thus purchased, is the beginning, middle, and end 
of our preaching." They eschew the habit of 
dogmatizing, and do not cultivate theological 
acumen. Controversy and abstruse speculation 
on religious subjects they repudiate. With the 
exception of their Easter Morning Litany, con- 
taining merely the essential truths of the Chris- 
tian religion, they have put forth no formulated 
creed of their own to which, as a body, they 
subscribe, although on the Continent of Europe, 
where their recognition by government depends 
upon a creed, they declare their adhesion to the 
Augsburg Confession with its twenty-one doc- 
trinal articles. They by no means accept all the 
sentiments, and least of all certain vagaries found 
in the writings of Count Zinzendorf. 



10 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.i 

The Unitas Fratrum is a wide-spread confeder- 
ation, the only Protestant church that subsists as 
an organic unit throughout the world. In its 
constitution it is Presbyterio-Episcopal, the fun- 
damental principle being that all ecclesiastical 
affairs are collegiate, or conducted by boards. 
As a body the Moravians are governed by a 
General Synod which meets in Herrnhut at 
intervals of ten years, more or less, their last 
assemblage, the twenty-ninth, having been held in 
1879. This supreme legislature consists of the 
Unity's officials, the Bishops of the church, nine 
delegates from each provincial Synod, and a few 
representatives from their foreign missions. 1 It 
legislates on matters common to the whole — the 
church's constitution, doctrine, discipline and 
foreign missions. Its executive, appointed by 
election, and called the Unity's Elders' Confer- 
ence, carries out decisions, and exercises general 
superintendence during the intervals. That high- 
est executive body has its seat at Berthelsdorf, the 
quiet little village upon which we looked down 
from the Hutberg, and to which we have just paid 
a flying visit. 

The Unitas Fratrum is divided into three prov- 
inces — the Continental or German, the English, 
and the American, which are governed respect- 

1 There is a General Synod Fund, the compound interest on 
which accumulating during the ten years' interval, is sufficient 
to defray all expenses. 



UWT.I.3 THEEE OKDEES. 11 

ively by Provincial Synods. Not unlike the re- 
lation of States in our Union to the general gov- 
ernment, the provinces are independent as to pro- 
vincial affairs, but intimately confederate as to 
all general principles of belief, practice, and for- 
eign missionary work. The late Lord John Rus- 
sell pronounced the constitution of the Moravian 
Church more skillfully and wisely balanced than 
any other which he was acquainted with. 

The three orders, Bishops, Presbyters and 
Deacons, are maintained ; but the form of gov- 
ernment had been determined before the epis- 
copate was adopted, and this additional element 
wrought no change as regards the seat of power, 
or the administration. Among the fundamental 
principles laid down by the General Synod are 
these : " Our episcopate, as such, gives no sort of 
claim to government in general, or to that of any 
congregation in particular ; nor is the administra- 
tion of dioceses by the bishops admissible." The 
episcopate, then, is spiritual and ministerial alone ; 
Bishops have a vote at General and Provincial 
Synods, but their office as such carries with it no 
ruling power in the church, their special function 
being the ordination of ministers. 1 They are not 

1 At the same time, however, they are almost invariably 
members of the governing boards, at the head of which they 
stand as presidents, presiding also, as a general thing, at the 
synods. Their office, moreover, is defined to be " in a peculiar 
sense, that of ' intercessors in the Church of God/ " 



12 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

lords, but brethren ; and that, too, in the matter 
of salary as in other respects, the average of sala- 
ries being low. 

Such a polity, it is obvious, differs widely from 
the provincial or diocesan episcopacy of the Roman 
Catholic Church and the Church of England. Of 
the numerous men who have held this office, not 
one has ever been deposed, or been charged with 
any flagrant offense. The Brethren's episcopate, 
received by them in 1735, came through a small 
branch of the Waldensian Church, formerly in 
Austria. 1 Although the office remained quiescent 
at one period for thirty-two years, and although 
the thread of perpetuity became extremely tenu- 
ous, yet it seems to have remained unbroken, and 
has at times served a good purpose. 2 This is the 
oldest Protestant Episcopal Church in existence; 



1 The Waldenses of more western Europe never laid claim to 
apostolic succession. 

2 For a long time the episcopate was maintained merely for 
the sake of keeping up the succession, although no opportunity 
existed for exercising the functions of the office. A visible 
organization of the church had ceased. The first Bishop of the 
Renewed TJnity's Church was ordained (1735) by Daniel Ernestus 
Jablonsky, D.D., Court Preacher at Berlin, Counselor of the 
Royal Consistory, Church Counselor, and President of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences. He was a grandson of Comenius. The 
ordination took place with the concurrence, by letter, of Sitko- 
vius, a Bishop of the Polish Brethren, and with the royal con- 
sent. Only two persons were present to witness the act. Of the 
one hundred and ten Bishops of the Renewed Church, about 
twelve have been from artisan or other humble positions. 



lect.i.] DISCIPLINE AND SPIRIT. 13 

but as regards their episcopate, the Moravians are 
singularly free from assumption ; they do not 
question the validity of Presbyterian ordination; 
the succession which they most value is that of 
apostolic truth, spirit and labors ; and they give 
marked prominence to the sole headship of Jesus 
Christ over the church in all her proceedings. 

Like the Fathers of New England, the Unitas 
Fratrum have, for the most part, upheld a script- 
ural discipline, maintaining that adhesion to a 
creed is not enough, but insisting upon evidence 
of personal piety as a condition of church mem- 
bership. 1 High commendation is due to them for 
taking such ground, and so early, on the Conti- 
nent, where connection with state churches had 
long been and still is a matter of course. In this 
respect the United Brethren, under their old 
regime as well, were greatly in advance of the 
German and Swiss Reformers, not chronologically 
alone, but also in the firmness with which they 
demanded purity of life as a test of discipleship. 
So pronounced were they in their communications 
to Luther that he took offense. At that time he 
needed a rebuke ; upon further acquaintance he 

1 " It has been from the beginning, and must ever remain, a 
matter of serious concern on the part of the Brethren's Church, 
that every individual member of the church should be a true 
Christian. For this it is necessary that the soul be brought to 
an increasingly deep and thorough knowledge of its sin and 
misery, of its worthiness of damnation, and of its need of 
redemption." Results of General Synod of 1879. 



14 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.i. 

felt differently, and had the grace to acknowledge 
his mistake. 1 " Since the days of the apostles," 
he wrote, " there has existed no church, which in 
her doctrines and rites has more nearly approxi- 
mated to the spirit of that age, than the Bohemian 
Brethren. Although they do not exceed us in 
purity of doctrine, for all the articles of faith are 
taught by us plainly and clearly according to the 
Word of God, yet they do excel us in the observ- 
ance of regular discipline, whereby they blessedly 
rule their congregations, and in this respect they 
are more deserving of praise than we." Their 
Renewed Church, during most of the last century, 
and at the present time also, deserves praise on 
the score of exemplary living. No other religious 
denomination, as a whole and for so long a period, 
has maintained a moral and social character more 
unimpeachable. I do not learn that an instance 
of capital crime or of divorce has ever been known 
among them. 

As a body they exhibit a childlike, cheerful 
piety, which, with its accompanying avoidance of 
noise and ostentation, seems, in a good measure, 
to realize the true conception of primitive Chris- 



1 Martin Bucer also wrote (1540) to the Brethren: "I am 
persuaded that you alone are they that at this day are found in 
all the world, amongst whom only flourishes a sound doctrine, 
with pure, wholesome, edifying discipline ." " Truly we are much 
ashamed of ourselves when we compare at any time our church 
with this of yours." 



lect. i.] RITUAL. 15 

tian character. In their renunciation of worldly 
vanities they exhibit simplicity unattended by 
asceticism. I am not aware that any other mod- 
ern Christian community have habitually, and for 
a lengthened period, more completely blended 
quiet religious earnestness with a joyous dis- 
charge of the common affairs of life. At their 
outset it was an aim, and to some good degree 
that aim has been kept up, to make all duties and 
all labor serve the purpose of spiritual refresh- 
ment. Their inner life, like that of their founder, 
is largely fed by sacred song; they have many 
fine chorals, some of them ancient, and also an 
abundance of hymns — cradle hymns, hymns for 
traveling, and, before the distaff became obsolete, 
spinning hymns. A blessing is often asked in the 
form of a verse sung at the table. But affluence 
rather than high poetic merit characterizes their 
hymnology. One of the compilations prepared by 
Zinzendorf embraces over two thousand (2,169) 
sacred lyrics designed for public use. 

Their Ritual is marked by comparative brevity 
and a limited number of formularies. Changes 
too are made from time to time, but only by 
authority of the General Synod. For the morn- 
ing service of the Lord's Day there is a prescribed 
Litany, but in other than Sabbath morning ser- 
vices extempore prayer is offered. For burial, 
marriage, baptism, and the Lord's Supper, there 
are prescribed forms ; and for the church seasons 



16 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.i. 

elaborate liturgical services, especially in the 
German language. Love Feasts, suggested by 
the primitive A gapse, are maintained, with sym- 
bols of family fellowship among Christians. In- 
deed, the fraternal sentiment and bond are pecu- 
liarly strong; their universal motto would seem 
to be : " Together do we pray, labor, suffer, 
rejoice." ■ 

And here it may be remarked, that during one 
third of a century from the date of their gather- 
ing at Herrnhut, the period of their greatest 
denominational aggressiveness, and before their 
religious views and usages had fully crj'stallized, 
there was, as is usual in such cases, comparative 
crudeness in their conceptions, and notwithstand- 
ing an element of quietism, there was what out- 
siders pronounced a certain air of self-assertion. 
That was inevitable. Their continental colonies, 
not to refer to others, planted in the midst of 
arrogant confessionalism, and the cold Lutheran 
orthodoxy of that day, were little fountains of 
spiritual life — conscious, vigorous life. They had 
a mission; it was to awaken, to foster, to con- 
serve the elements of vital Christianity wherever 
found. Each individual member, and each col- 
lective community was deemed, nor wholly with- 
out reason, peculiarly a temple of the Holy Ghost, 
a tabernacle where the crucified One manifested 

1 In commune oramus, in commune laboramus, in commune 
patimur, in commune gaudemus. 



LECT.io CHURCH FESTIVALS. 17 

himself in special intimacy. To profess that, 
among the frigid and unsympathizing, was of 
course to provoke the charge of assumption, 
enthusiasm, fanaticism. They were an emotional 
people ; and undue emotional indulgence would 
sometimes degenerate, as it everywhere will, into 
sentimentality. 

The Moravians observe the chief festivals of 
the Christian year, as well as Memorial Days, 
days noteworthy in their own ecclesiastical his- 
tory; and furthermore, the annual festivals of 
the various choirs, or classes of the congregation. 
Christmas is a most joyous occasion; the night- 
watch universally closes the year. Passion week 
is celebrated chiefly by the public reading of a 
harmonized account from the Gospels, of our 
Saviour's last days on earth, interspersed with 
the singing of appropriate stanzas. No other 
church surpasses the Moravian in the jubilant 
character of Easter services. It is the custom in 
their villages for a procession with trombones, 
a favorite instrument, to awake the inhabitants 
before daybreak by an Easter morning choral. 
An early matin service is held ; and after that 
they go to the cemetery in season to meet the ris- 
ing sun. Nothing can be more impressive than 
this devoutly joyful observance. A special Easter 
Litany is used ; and no body of Christians have a 
more exultant belief in the resurrection of the 
dead. There, amidst the graves of a multitude 

2 



18 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

who have fallen asleep in Jesus, the prayer goes 
up : " Keep us in everlasting fellowship with o'ur 
brethren and with our sisters who have entered 
into the joy of their Lord ; also with the servants 
and handmaids of our church, whom thou hast 
called home in the past year, and with the whole 
church triumphant." The closing ascription is 
rendered : " Glory be to Him who is the Resur- 
rection and the Life ; He was dead, and behold 
He is alive for evermore. And he that believeth 
in Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live. 
Glory be to Him in the church which waiteth for 
Him, and in that which is around him, forever 
and ever. Amen." The effective accompani- 
ment of trombones lends grandeur to the service, 
and seems to anticipate the voice of the archangel 
and the trump of God. 

The United Brethren have done much in the 
line of education. This was true during their 
earlier era. The last of their bishops of the 
Moravian Province, John Amos Comenius (Kom- 
ensky), through his numerous and valuable writ- 
ings on the subject, enjoyed a European reputa- 
tion. His work, Janua lingitarum reserata, a new 
method of teaching languages (1631), had a re- 
markable popularity, being translated into twelve 
European tongues and into more than one Asiatic 
tongue — the Turkish and Arabic. Orbis Pictus 
by him has not even yet passed out of use, and 
his works number over ninety. He was a pioneer 



lect.i.] EDUCATION. 19 

in advocating the equal education of the sexes, 
the system of object teaching, the necessity of 
physical training, and the importance of aiming 
to develope the whole human being. His ser- 
vices were sought for in Poland, Sweden, and 
England ; and no educator of that day achieved 
such celebrity. Through the negotiation of Gov- 
ernor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, during his 
travels in the Low Countries, Comenius was at 
one time on the point of becoming President 
of Harvard College, but through the influence of 
the Swedish ambassador, his steps were turned in 
another direction. 1 A man so much respected for 
learning and religious character would make his 
impress on education among the Brethren of the 
Renewed Church. They are not deficient in 
theological seminaries, 2 there being one such in 
each of the three provinces — the one at Bethle- 
hem, Pennsylvania, having been established the 
same year as that of Andover (1807). Infant and 
parochial schools are well administered, but their 
boarding-schools have become famous. The first 
was opened at Neuwied on the Rhine (1756) ; and 
there are now fifty-one, four of them in the United 
States. The seminary for girls at Bethlehem, 
Pennsylvania, opened in 1749 — converted into 
a boarding-school thirty-four years later (1783) — 

1 Mather's Magnolia, Book IV. 

2 In Prussia at Gnadenfeld, in England at Fairfield near 
Manchester. 



20 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.i. 

takes rank, in order of time, before all other enter- 
prises for female education this side the Atlantic. 
Glancing at the catalogues of institutions so recent 
as most of ours, the eye lingers with some degree 
of surprise on one for 1881, its title-page announc- 
ing the "one hundred and thirty-second scholas- 
tic year." l In Moravian schools we find a sensible 
and thorough course, with no excess of mental 
stimulus ; a healthful religious atmosphere ; a 
supervision of pupils that is kind and indefatiga- 
ble, no one being left without teacher or guard- 
ian day or night. The pupils at these excellent 
seminaries are largely from outside the denomina- 
tion. 2 

Although Moravian communities are well edu- 
cated, it is not authorship but edification and 
unobtrusive action which have been their aim. 



1 The Moravian Female Seminary at Salem, North Carolina, 
"was opened in 1804. 

2 The Baroness Bunsen remarks: "The Moravian training 
has left a blessing behind it — 'some kindly gleam of love and 
prayer' — 'to soften every cross and care' — impressions of the 
love of God and man, of devotional charity which intercourse 
with the world could not efface, and which in the cool of soli- 
tude could revive ; and lawful, correct notions of Christian doc- 
trine and of man's duty and calling. These are the positive advan- 
tages which I have seen and known to be the fruits of Moravian 
education, though there may be cases in which such have not 
been its results. The negative, and yet important, advantages 
consist in extreme simplicity of habits of life, and the absence 
of all attention to mere matters of vanity." Life and Letters, II, 
95. 



lect. i.] EDUCATION. 21 

Beyond sacred lyrics and missionary publications 
their contributions to literature have not been 
large ; though science is now and then indebted 
to the Unity. 1 Men born and bred among the 
Moravians have sometimes passed into other com- 
munions and there distinguished themselves. 
Such were Fries, the philosopher, Novalis (Von 
Hardenburg), philosopher, poet, and mystic, and 
Dr. von Zeschwitz, a professor at Erlangen. 2 
Schleiermacher's early education was at a psedi- 
gogium of the Brethren, and he never ceased to 
feel the happy influence of his training while 
there. Eminent German professors have, through 
Moravian influence, been brought to a saving 
knowledge of the truth. Hengstenberg, of Ber- 
lin, began his official life as a decided rationalist ; 
he attended a religious service among the United 
Brethren, became deeply impressed, betook him- 
self to the study of the Bible, and came forth a 
champion of evangelical Christianity. Olshausen 
too began as a rationalist ; would taunt Tholuck 



1 Lewis David de Schweinitz, for instance, a former divine at 
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, two of whose sons became Bishops of 
the American Province, was an eminent naturalist, and distin- 
guished himself in certain recondite branches of botany. He 
gave an impulse especially to the study of American Fungi, in 
which department he added about twelve hundred species. 

2 In our country, Dr. Ernest L. Haselius, a leading professor 
and an author of note among Southern Lutherans, and Dr. 
Joseph T. Berg, son of a Moravian missionary in Antigua, a 
champion of Protestantism. 



22 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

for being a pietist and Herrnhutter ; but the read- 
ing of the Life of Count Zinzendorf was blessed to 
his conversion. * 

It becomes an historical requirement that we 
look at the earlier, the furnace period of the 
United Brethren, and their exodus from the 
house of bondage, I must then invite you to 
accompany me to Hochwald, 2 in the range of the 
Riesen-Gebirge, " Giant Mountains," where we 
shall find a summit-house like that on our Mt. 
Washington. Here are the confines of the great 
Sclavonic family of nations which, with their 
eighty millions, people the eastern portion of 
Europe. We are standing on an elevated crest 
that encompasses the Bohemian basin. From 
the sides of the mountain ranges enclosing this 
irregular square, the streams flow toward the 
center, and unite to form the river Elbe, which, 
breaking through the mountain wall, pursues its 
course of five hundred miles to the German Ocean. 
By numerous rivers, and by its twenty thousand 
ponds, the country is well watered ; it has a fair 
share of fertile lands; it has mineral wealth; it 
has mineral springs — those of Carlsbad, Marien- 
bad, Toplitz, and Seidlitz are famous. We are 

1 Life of Charles Hodge, 129, 134. 

2 One hundred miles to the east is Breslau, the capital of 
Silesia, forty or more miles westward lies Dresden, the capital 
of Saxony, and sixty miles southward is Prague, the capital of 
Bohemia. 



lbct.i.] EARLY MARTYRS. 23 

looking down upon the chief center of the Thirty 
Years' War; also on the seat of the war of 1865, 
and our eye detects the memorable neighborhood 
of Koniggratz. We are gazing upon a cradle of 
the great German Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, which, in some respects, was an outcome 
from the pioneer work of Bohemian martyrs, 
almost as truly as the noble German Elbe has its 
head waters here. A bigoted type of Romanism 
reigns within this girdle of hills. Looking back 
upon the history of Bohemia, as we have now 
glanced round her domain, we light upon dark 
chapters ; we read of bitter hatred, calumnies and 
manifold wrongs heaped upon those noble men, 
John Huss, Jerome of Prague, and their adher- 
ents, a century before the great movement under 
Luther, Zwingle, and Knox. In the war that 
ensued upon the martyrdom at Constance (1415) 
and in later persecutions, we read of unsurpassed 
insult and ferocity exercised upon reformers and 
reformed before and since the Reformation. One 
specimen will suffice. A captain of Jaromier 
broke into the church of Kerezin during divine 
service; ordered some of those present to be 
massacred, and others to be seized as prisoners. 
Then taking the chalice full of wine from the 
altar, he drank to the health of his horse, and 
gave him also to drink, saying that his horse even 
had become a Utraquist. Jesenius, physician and 
professor in the University of Prague, because of 



24 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, t 

his becoming ambassador to Hungary, was con- 
demned to have his tongue cut out, his body 
quartered, and then his head and limbs exposed. 
But, so the historian relates, "Through the ten- 
derness of the king, after having his tongue cut 
out, he shall first be beheaded and then quar- 
tered.'' x Tender-hearted monarch ! 

It was at the village of Kunewalde, about 
eighty miles from Prague, in the circuit of Konig- 
gratz, on the northeastern confines of Bohemia 
and Silesia, that the founding of the ancient 
church took place (1457), though it assumed a 
more definite form ten years later (1467). That 
was sixty years before the famous theses were 
nailed to the door of the Castle church at Witten- 
berg. About that time, the middle of the fifteenth 
century, the proscribed followers of Huss began to 
call one another by the title of Brethren, first 
calling themselves Fratres Legis Christi; but as 
that appellation might suggest the idea of a mo- 
nastic order, it was afterwards exchanged for 
Unitas Fratrum, and was assumed on account of 
a formal union (1457-60) between Moravians, 
Bohemians and Waldenses. In process of time 
they came to be known as the church of the 
Bohemian Brethren, which, after generations of 
trial, and a season of apparent extinction, is to 
reappear as the present Unitas Fratrum. Their 

1 The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia, I, 18, 392. 






lect.i.] EARLY MARTYRS. 25 

rugged cradle and rigorous Kindergarten lay 
within the period and the region now before us. 
For a century and more these witnesses to the 
truth, at intervals "had trial of cruel mockings 
and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and 
imprisonments; they wandered in mountains, 
and in dens and caves of the earth ; " and hence 
were called " Pitmen " or " Burrowers." Owing 
to persecution, many fled to Poland ; and at one 
time, the middle of the sixteenth century, there 
were three confederate provinces, the Bohemian, 
Moravian, and Polish, as now there are the Ger- 
man, English, and American. Their condition 
was much the same as that of the Vauclois in 
Piedmont and the Camisards in Southern France. 
At different periods you may see them gathering 
in mountain defiles and caverns, amidst the intense 
cold of a Bohemian winter, to read the Holy 
Scriptures around camp-fires which they do not 
dare to kindle by day lest the smoke should betray 
their place of assembling. On the way to such 
rendezvous they tread one in the steps of another, 
the last comer fully obliterating the tracks with a 
pine branch dragged behind him. At one time 
six men, artisans and peasants, are brought before 
Baron von Schwanberg. A priest asks them if 
they will follow him as spiritual guide. They 
answer: "The Shepherd of our souls is Jesus 
Christ ;" and they are led out to execution. At 
another time (1528), two brothers, mechanics, are 



26 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

conducted to the stake at Prague. " As the Lord 
Jesus has suffered such cruel pain for us," says 
one of them, " we will also endure this death, 
rejoicing that we are counted worthy to suffer for 
the Word of God." " Truly," replies the other, 
" I never felt such joy even on my wedding day 
as now." Seasons of relief sometimes occurred, 
and occasionally through a noticeable interposi- 
tion. In one instance the Arch-Chancellor of 
Bohemia repaired to Vienna (1563) to obtain a 
decree for fresh persecution. His importunity 
succeeded, but on his return a bridge over the 
Danube sank under him ; the greater part of his 
suite were drowned, and the casket which con- 
tained the fatal decree was never recovered. Be- 
fore that time there had been so many sudden 
deaths of powerful enemies of the Gospel as to 
occasion a proverb : " If any man is weary of life 
he has only to persecute the Brethren." 

At the time of the Reformation four hundred 
churches, with a membership of two hundred 
thousand, might be found in Bohemia and Mora- 
via. In one of the synodical gatherings there 
were present, besides ecclesiastics, seventeen of 
the most distinguished barons of Bohemia, and 
one hundred and forty-six nobles of inferior rank. 
Printing-presses were busy in multiplying copies 
of the Bohemian Bible, catechism, hymn-books 
and theological works. It is their honor to have 
been the first to translate the Bible into the 



lect. i.] SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PERSECUTIONS. 27 

Bohemian vernacular from the original tongues. 
This version, which is a model of idiomatic 
Bohemian, and a linguistic authority to the pres- 
ent day, appeared in six volumes folio, from 1579 
to 1590, and was the labor of fifteen years. 1 

But the rancorous Ferdinand II, who came to 
the throne (1617), had been educated by the 
Jesuits ; was a very child of hell ; took upon 
himself a vow to exterminate all heresy, and 
with the bitter fidelity of fanaticism, acted on his 
resolution. Thus began that disastrous move- 
ment known as the Anti-Reformation. Imprison- 
ment, confiscation, banishment and torture were 
the order of the day. Some of the Brethren apos- 
tatized ; but many remained heroically firm, like 
John Prostiborsky, who, amidst the agonies of the 
rack, bit his tongue that he might not reveal any- 
thing to the injury of his associates. At length 
the decisive battle of Weisenberg, " White Moun- 
tain," 1620, gave apparently a final triumph to the 
cause of unrighteousness, and extirpation of the 
evangelicals was resolved upon. The noble army 
of martyrs received large accessions, not less than 
twenty-seven Protestant noblemen, many of them 
members of the Brethren's Church, being executed 
in one day (1621). Count Andreas Schlick, one 
of the most eminent for talent and accomplish- 

1 The New Testament has been reprinted by the Amos 
Comenius Society at Prague, assisted by the London Religious 
Tract Society. 



28 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

ments among the Bohemian nobility, mounting 
the scaffold in the full blaze of a June morning, 
exclaims: " Christ, the sun of righteousness, grant 
that I may pass through the darkness of death 
to thine everlasting light ! ' The knight, Caspar 
Capliz, eighty years of age, too feeble to walk 
alone, and too stiff to kneel at the place of execu- 
tion, except with great difficulty, breathes out his 
soul with the words : " Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit." Just as the executioner was ready to do 
his office, "I see the heavens opened," exclaimed 
Otto von Loos, Stephen-like. Such were the vic- 
tims of the tender mercies of Holy Mother Church 
and of civil potentates obedient to her behests. 
At the castle of Prostau hundreds of persons 
were confined in the stable, every opening of 
which was carefully closed up, thus converting 
it into an earlier Black Hole of Calcutta. At 
Koniggratz the brutal soldiery, quartered upon 
those inhabitants whose only fault was that they 
were not Papists, practiced special severity. 
Shall it be considered a coincidence undesigned 
by God, that the decisive battle which humbled 
Austria in 1866 occurred at Koniggratz? 

Evangelical pastors, whether Lutherans, Re- 
formed, or Picards, as the Brethren were called 
contemptuously, became especially obnoxious to 
the Papists, who at length effected their removal. 1 

1 In 1624 all had been driven from the country. Of the two 
hundred who went into exile, one hundred and four died within 
ten years. 



lect.i.] AMOS COMENIUS. 29 

To harbor one of those banished men was made a 
penal offence ; Protestant Bibles and other books 
were burned — one Jesuit boasting that he had 
thus destroyed over sixty thousand volumes ; 
graves were desecrated; taxation amounting to 
spoliation, and other oppressive measures con- 
tinued till the population of the country was 
reduced to about one fourth — from three millions 
to eight hundred thousand. More than thirty 
thousand families emigrated. Flourishing do- 
mains became wastes, while the spiritual desola- 
tion was still more appalling. Ferdinand made a 
solitude, and called it peace, and received the 
thanks of the Romish hierarchy as if he had 
performed a meritorious feat. Economically Bo- 
hemia suffered no less than Spain from the expul- 
sion of the Moors, and France from the exile of 
the Huguenots. 1 

The last bishop of this older Brethren's Church, 
Comenius, a man of superior talent, learning and 
piety, has already been mentioned as a distin- 
guished educator. When, in 1627, all the Protes- 
tant nobility were expelled from the kingdom, he 
was obliged to leave his retreat, the castle of a 
friendly Bohemian baron, and with a part of his 
flock to migrate into Poland. Reaching the sum- 

1 In the peace of Westphalia (1648) the Protestant powers 
made no effort to secure a single stipulation favorable to their 
co-religionists in Bohemia and Moravia, but abandoned them to 
the merciless intolerance of Austria. 



30 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, i. 

mit of this very range of mountains where, in 
imagination, we have stationed ourselves, he 
turned for a farewell look upon that region 
which had become an aceldama, kneeled with 
his fellow exiles, and offered up a most fervent 
prayer, beseeching God not to suffer the light of 
divine truth to go out in those countries they 
were leaving, but that he would there preserve a 
seed to serve him. His supplication ranks among 
the memorable historic prayers, such as that of 
William Tyndale, who, an exile and at the stake, 
offered the petition : " O Lord, open the king of 
England's eyes." A century afterwards it was 
inscribed within the ball of the Bohemian church- 
steeple at Berlin, being then regarded as a prayer 
and a prophecy accomplished. 1 

By the close of the seventeenth century any 
student of history, or observer of the times, would 
have said that Protestantism had breathed its last 
in Bohemia. The Brethren's Church* subsequent 
to its destruction in that country, after having 
continued for nearly three quarters of a century 
longer in Poland and Hungary, now had no dis- 
tinct existence ; even the shadow of organization 



1 Comenius is a grand and venerable figure of sorrow. 
Wandering, persecuted and homeless, during the terrible and 
desolating Thirty Years' War, he yet never despaired, but with 
enduring truth, and strong in faith, he labored unweariedly to 
prepare youth by a better education for a better future. Von 
Raumer, 



lect.i.] HIDDEN BELIEVERS. 31 

could not easily be found. The Brethren had 
been banished, burned, drowned, or imprisoned in 
the deep mines of Kuttenberg. What but extinc- 
tion may be expected when a people are outlawed 
and despoiled ; when they are liable to be thrust 
into dungeons or bound to the rack ; when they 
may be murdered with impunity; when a man's 
foes are they of his own household, nearest rela- 
tives in the dread of death betraying one another? 
It is only strange that this outraged church had 
existed so long. Through many a dreary year 
her " witnesses prophesied, clothed in sackcloth." 
Notwithstanding public Protestantism was ex- 
tinguished, the Lord still had a small remnant, 
called "The Hidden Seed," in Bohemia and 
Moravia. Here and there was a Bible in a cellar, 
in a hole in the wall, in a hollow log, or in a space 
beneath the dog-kennel — a secret which the head 
of the family would dare to make known, even to 
his children, only on his death-bed. At one place 
on the border line of Hungary, the farmers were 
wont to go over the boundary from week to week 
on Saturday, to bring hay in their carts ; and 
they would also bring back their pastor, con- 
cealed in a load, that he might preach to them on 
the Sabbath. At another village might be seen a 
woodman, axe in hand, wending his way through 
the forest in order to hold a service, though at the 
risk of his life, among Bohemian Brethren. He 
was a Hungarian pastor, and did not bid for a 
larger field or a higher salary. 



32 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.i. 

All this while the Lord had his thoughts of 
mercy, and his ulterior plans. Though the very 
name of the Brethren had almost died out, a 
breath of spring passed over the little remnant in 
Bohemia and Moravia. This breathing of the 
Holy Spirit from the four winds of heaven early 
in the last century (1715) came into the valley of 
vision at one and the same time, without concert 
between the dry bones of Fulneck 1 in Moravia, 
and Leutomischel and Landscrone in Bohemia 
— one of those instances of simultaneous and 
independent gracious visitation which always 
betoken something special and far-reaching in 
the spiritual kingdom. Christian David, a car- 
penter in the village of Senftleben, a superstitious 
Roman Catholic, had soul-troubles which no pen- 
ances or invocation of saints could relieve. Till 
twenty years of age he had not even seen a Bible; 
but coming into acquaintance with some of the 
Protestants who, in spite of imprisonment, would 
pray and sing, whatever it cost them, and obtain- 
ing a copy of the Holy Scriptures, he was savingly 
taught of God. Leaving his native country, he 
worked at his trade in Prussia, Lusatia and Sile- 
sia, becoming meanwhile fully confirmed in the 
faith. He began to make journeys back into 
Moravia that he might communicate truths which 

1 Fulneck belonged to the parish in which Comenius had 
labored, and in which afterwards was felt the influence of the 
pious George Jaschke. 



lect.io THE EXODUS. 33 

had brought life to his own soul. Arriving at his 
native village ^1717) he became acquainted with 
the family of Neissers, grandchildren of a deeply 
pious man, George Jaschke, who, like Enoch, had 
walked with God in the midst of an ungodly 
Jesuit community. They were powerfully awak- 
ened, and desired to emigrate. Christian David 
searched long to find an asylum for them ; and 
was finally directed to Count Zinzendorf, who 
promised to receive Moravian emigrants on his 
estate at Berthelsdorf. Christian David hastens 
back (1722), and two out of five brothers resolve 
at once to leave house and home, a good business 
and a handsome property. In the fear of betrayal 
they dare not communicate their decision to 
friends, though they could not refrain from ap- 
prising their mother, who was so overcome as to 
faint repeated^. The next night two of the 
Neissers, their wives, one son of six years, a 
daughter of three, and twins only twelve weeks 
old, with Jaschke and a j r oung woman, after ten 
o'clock start on their pilgrimage under the guid- 
ance of Christian David. He conducts them 
along by-ways into Silesia, and the exiles reach 
the estate of Zinzendorf, though the Count him- 
self was then absent in Dresden. At the instance 
of his steward and of a tutor in the Gersdorf 
family at Gross-Hennersdorf, a site for them is 
selected. It was then a perfect wilderness, cov- 
ered with bushes and trees ; the ground a swamp, 

3 



34 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.l 

and not a habitation to be seen in the vicinity. 
The first blow of a woodsman's axe was struck by- 
Christian David, whose tombstone is the first to 
meet us on entering the cemetery at Herrnhut. 
Passing through the present village in a direction 
nearly opposite to that " God's Acre," we come to 
a monument placed near the highway ^ in a grove. 
It is the only monument of the kind to be found 
throughout the region; for the Moravian Breth- 
ren are not given to paying compliments either to 
the living or the dead. Even this Denkstein ex- 
hibits no name. The inscription runs thus : " On 
this spot was felled the first tree for the settle- 
ment of Herrnhut, June 17, 1722. Psalm 84: 
4 [3] : ' Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and 
the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay 
her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my 
king and my God.' ' : The new settlement here 
was begun just one hundred years after the de- 
struction of the old Moravian church in Bohemia 
and Moravia, and came to be known as Herrnhut, 
the " Lord's Watch." 

The departure of the Neissers exposed their rel- 
atives who remained behind to persecution. They 
were thrown into prison; one man's house was 
leveled to the ground, merely for having lodged 
a Protestant; but this only reconciled them to 
leave all the next year and betake themselves to 
Herrnhut. Christian David revisited Moravia, 
and his secret labors were attended by a remark- 



utcT.x.] PEOVIDENTIAL DESIGNS. 85 

able religious awakening. Herdsmen among their 
flocks spent the time in prayer and in singing 
spiritual hymns; secular music was no longer 
heard in the villages, and places of amusement 
were abandoned. The old resort of fine, imprison- 
ment and torture failed to arrest the work of grace 
or to check the flight of the Brethren. Once 
fairly beyond the immediate precincts of peril 
from Jesuit watchfulness, they would fall on their 
knees, implore divine protection, and join in a 
hymn which their ancestors had composed and 
sung under similar circumstances a hundred years 
before : 

" Bless'd be the day when I must roam 
Far from my country, friends and home, 

An exile poor and mean ; 
My fathers' God will be my guide, 
Will angel guards for me provide, 

My soul in danger screen ; 
Himself will lead me to a spot, 
Where, all my cares and griefs forgot, 

I shall enjoy sweet rest ; 
As pants for cooling streams the hart, 
I languish for my heavenly part, 

For God, my refuge blest." 

Thus one group after another effected their 
escape, never without greatest inconvenience, 
great suffering, and often with signal interpositions 
of Providence. The sacred stream, which to all 
public observation was completely dried up, had 
only disappeared beneath the surface; and now 
at the foot of the Hutberg is a Siloam where 



36 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.i. 

it comes to light again. If Catholic potentates 
and priesthood had been tolerant, the Unitas 
Fratrum might never have had existence outside 
of the Austrian empire. Herrnhut is the Plym- 
outh Rock of the Moravians. The privations 
of early settlers there were not inferior to those 
of our fathers, nor was their cheerfulness under 
those privations inferior. Yes, here is the cradle 
of a Renewed Church ; here the administrative 
center of that community bearing the corporate 
name of Unitas Fratrum, which for a century and 
a half, notwithstanding its wide dispersion, has 
remained singularly united ; and in proportion to 
numbers and resources, has continued loyal, be- 
yond any other religious body, to the true idea of 
gospel promulgation. Her evangelism is her life 
and glory, prosecuted as it has been in regions 
and under circumstances most forbidding. What- 
ever else of value may have resulted from the 
Bohemian reformation, or may now remain in that 
country, this was the jewel. 1 

On the map of Europe Herrnhut is an almost 
invisible point. In the chart of modern history, 
the affairs of Bohemia and Moravia, two among 
the many constituencies of the Austrian Empire, 
do not occupy a large space. Why then this 
review of such antecedents? Because history is 
not a rope of sand, a mere aggregation of facts. 

1 Die Perle der bohmischen Reformation. Czerwenka I, Vor. 
xi. 



lkct.io PROVIDENTIAL DESIGNS. 37 

Herrnhut is a result, not simply a beginning. No 
isolated beginning can be found this side of Eden. 
The Unitas Fratrum, in its missionary develop- 
ment, has continuity with former generations and 
with the other side of the Giant Mountains. That 
long and bitter schooling of Moravian Brethren, 
with its four distinct persecutions, had preparatory 
reference to a work which is now upon the second 
century of its noble fulfillment. Severity of disci- 
pline imparted Christian firmness and transpar- 
ency. Upon their character, patterns of self-sacri- 
fice and endurance, traced like figures on their own 
beautiful Bohemian glass, were made permanent in 
the furnace of fiery trials. 



LECTURE II. 



COUNT ZINZENDORF. 



COUNT ZINZENDORF. 



First-rate men are a formative power in their 
times; second-rate men are formed by their times. 
No great movement in society or in the church 
takes place without a superior mind to lead and 
give it shape. Whenever God would set in 
motion a far-reaching enterprise, whenever he 
would bring about a reformation, political, philan- 
thropic or religious, he raises up some agent 
specially fitted for the work. Is Holland to be 
liberated, or Italy reunited ? William the Silent 
and Count Cavour appear on the stage. When 
evangelical religion is to be revived in England, 
prison discipline to be reformed, the slave-trade 
abolished, the Order of Deaconesses restored, 
and the "Inner Mission" established, White- 
field and Wesley, Howard, Clarkson, Fliedner, 
Wichern are at hand. To this category be- 
longs Count Zinzendorf. If persistence in lofty 
aims, if unflagging zeal for the highest good of 
others, if consecration to the ministry of Chris- 
tian ideas in advance of one's age, if imparting 
a valuable impulse and impress which abide 
through generations constitute greatness, then 
was he, despite of certain imperfections and mis- 

(41) 



42 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.ii. 

takes, a great man. Abuse did not sour him, nor 
did difficulties daunt him. Though he stands at 
the head of Moravian writers, his life is greater 
than his writings; it has proved germinant and 
fruitful. He was not only a statesman, an eccle- 
siastical administrator, a poet and preacher, but 
also a missionary. As his influence upon the 
Renewed Church of the United Brethren at the 
outset of their foreign work was in a high degree 
plastic, satisfactory acquaintance with their mis- 
sions requires that we make his character and 
course a study. 

Belonging to an Austrian house of high an- 
tiquity, Count Zinzendorf could look back upon 
twenty generations to the founder, Ehrenhold. 
It was one of twelve families on which, in the 
eleventh century, the Austrian dynasty depended 
for support. His grandfather, in leaving Austria 
for conscience sake, left all his estates behind him. 
His father entered the service of the Elector of 
Saxony at Dresden, and died six months after the 
birth of this son, May 26, 1700. He was a man 
of decided piety. Spener, the Electress of Sax- 
ony and the Electress Palatinate stood as sponsors 
to the child at his baptism. Upon the second 
marriage of his mother, Zinzendorf, while yet a 
mere child, was left to the care of his grand- 
mother, the Baroness von Gersdorf, who lived in 
the Castle of Gross-Hennersdorf, from which 
Herrnhut is distant only a league. We will 



lect.ii.] EARLY PIETY. 43 

linger a moment at the old ancestral pile, as it 
now stands. It is sadly dilapidated. A forester 
occupies a part of the basement on one side of 
the court. Silence and decay reign in the halls. 
We are shown the window, out of which when 
a boy, Zinzendorf, with childlike simplicity, tossed 
letters addressed to the Saviour, telling him how 
his heart felt toward him, in the hope that his 
heavenly Friend might find them. At that time, 
a century and three quarters ago, this manorial 
seat was the abode of comfort, and a certain 
amount of elegance and opulence. 

The chief ornament of the place was the Bar- 
oness von Gersdorf. A woman of superior mind 
and culture, she read the Bible in its original 
languages, composed hymns in German and Latin, 
and in the last-named language carried on corre- 
spondence with Spener, Franke, Von Canstein 
and other learned men. Her Christian character, 
decided in its tone, took on the type of Pietism 
in its initial and better period. An aunt who 
was also in the family, prayed with the lad morn- 
ing and evening. His earliest boyhood revealed 
noteworthy traits, for even at that period he 
began to hold intimate communion with the Lord 
Jesus, a practice which continued through life. 
When the army of Charles XII of Sweden was 
in Saxony, a party of soldiers intruding them- 
selves into the Castle of Hennersdorf, and into 
the room where the Count, only six years old, 



44 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

was at prayer, were so impressed by the earnest- 
ness of his devotions that they paused in silence, 
and soon withdrew. It was in his fourth year 
that he began earnestly to seek after God ; and 
while yet a child he framed a covenant which ran 
thus : " Be thou mine, dear Saviour, and I will 
be thine ; " and it was often renewed afterwards. 
His chief delight seemed to be in showing kind- 
ness to others ; and he would deem nothing valu- 
able to himself which another needed more. 

At ten years of age Zinzendorf entered the 
Royal Psedagogium of Halle, then under the care 
of Augustus Hermann Franke. Here his habits 
of devotion and his interest in practical benevo- 
lence gained further strength. So active had he 
been in establishing circles for prayer, that on 
leaving Halle (1716) he handed Professor Franke 
a list of seven such societies. Religious activity 
had not interfered with his studies, for at that 
age, sixteen, he could compose a Greek oration, 
and speak extemporaneously in Latin, on subjects 
given out at the time. He next joined the Uni- 
versity of Wittenberg, the design of an uncle who 
had charge of his education being to withdraw 
him from the religious atmosphere of Halle, which 
it was feared might indispose him for the worldly 
position then in mind. Family friends anticipat- 
ing for him civil promotion such as his father 
had achieved, the young Count was matriculated 
as student of jurisprudence. That course being 



wot. ii.] EARLY TRAVELS. 45 

distasteful, he desired to devote himself to Bibli- 
cal studies ; yet yielded dutifully to the com- 
mands of relatives. In the comparative seclusion 
and want of Christian fellowship at Wittenberg, 
his inner experience became for a time more legal- 
istic ; he fell into somewhat rigorous asceticism, 
devoting much time to fasting, and whole nights 
to prayer, as did Wesley and Whitefield a few 
years later at Oxford ; while the religious frater- 
nities which he had formed at the Pnedagogium 
also remind us of the Oxford Methodists. Zin- 
zendorf gave himself, however, with much industry 
to his studies, and before leaving the University 
delivered lectures to some young men on the civil 
law. Although a youth of only eighteen, he 
attempted to mediate between the contending 
theologians of Wittenberg and Halle ; his media- 
tion was accepted; and but for the needless 
interference of his private tutor, important results 
might have followed. Such a character, such a 
development was all the more remarkable, consid- 
ering the class to which he belonged, and the age 
in which he lived, that of a century and a half 
ago. "In these corrupt times," said Spener, "it 
seems to men well-nigh impossible to bring up 
children, especially of the higher rank, as Chris- 
tians." 

Between two and three years having been spent 
at Wittenberg in the study of law, theology, 
Hebrew and related departments, he began his 



46 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

travels, which according to the custom of the day, 
constituted a necessary part of the education of 
a young nobleman. The tour then made both 
disclosed and confirmed his traits. Holland and 
France were the countries principally to be vis- 
ited. Aware that powerful temptations would 
await him, he resolved firmly to maintain his 
Christian position, and hence wrote — a sugges- 
tive declaration for young tourists — " If the 
object of my being sent to France is to make me 
a man of the world, I declare that this is money 
thrown away; for God will, in his goodness, 
preserve in me the desire to live only for Jesus 
Christ." His soul seemed to be uniformly lifted 
above earthly things. In the Diisseldorf Gallery 
of paintings his attention was drawn, with marked 
effect, to a wonderfully expressive Ecce Homo, 
over which were the words : 

" This have I done for thee : 
What doest thou for me?" 1 

On his nineteenth birthday he arrived at 
Utrecht, and there spent some months in attend- 
ing lectures in the law department and also in the 
study of medicine. Thence he went to France. 
The Count's noble birth entitled him to admission 
into the higher circles of Parisian society; in 
person and manners he was sufficiently attractive 

1 Hoc feci pro te, 
Quid facts pro me ? 



lect.iio CHOICE OF POSITION. 47 

to be sought for ; yet would he make no com- 
promise of Christian consistency ; would neither 
gamble nor dance at court, nor become intimate 
with any one who appeared unworthy of confi- 
dence. " Good evening, Count," said a Duchess ; 
"were you at the opera last evening?" "No, 
madame," he replied, " I have no time to go to 
the opera." An attempt was made by Cardinal 
de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris, to convert him 
to the Roman Catholic faith ; but the young man 
did not waver any more than when the same 
thing was attempted previously at the Hague. 
Others tried to corrupt his morals ; but no 
blandishments and no arguments could make 
him swerve from his loyalty to simple scripture 
truths, which had been well weighed and settled 
in his convictions. Such institutions as the Hotel 
Dieu were far more attractive to him than the 
splendors of Versailles. " Oh, brilliant wretched- 
ness ! " x he exclaims, as some others have done 
on leaving Paris. 

His strong desire, cherished from childhood, 
was to devote himself exclusively to the cause 
of Christ; 2 and during a visit at Halle, he was 
offered the position which had been held by the 
deceased Baron von Canstein, who established 
the first institution for circulating the Bible ; but 

1 splendida miseria ! 

2 Ich habe von Kindheit auf ein Feuer in meinen Beinen die 
ewige Gottheit Jesus zu predigen. Theol. Bedenk. (1742), 122. 



48 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

his relatives would not listen to this. They had 
destined him for the service of the king of Sax- 
ony ; and his principle of filial obedience, a prin- 
ciple much stronger then and now in Germany 
than in our country, led to the sacrifice of his 
own preferences without a murmur. Yielding 
to family pressure, he accepted the position of 
Aulic and Justicial Counselor at Dresden. The 
Saxon Court under Augustus the Strong was 
a center where any man of piety would not fail 
to have his righteous soul vexed. When he en- 
tered upon this high position, Zinzendorf 's chief 
solicitude was the safety of his own soul and the 
salvation of others. He became a Daniel at 
court, keeping the windows of his chamber open 
towards Jerusalem. Faithful in civil trusts, he 
was yet chiefly assiduous in testifying to the grace 
of God in Jesus Christ. Religious meetings were 
held at his house with open doors; and a singular 
spectacle it was, to see a young man wearing a 
sword as a badge of his rank, yet preaching the 
gospel of peace. Seekers of salvation were the 
persons whom he chiefly sought ; and no barrier 
could keep him away from those, whatever their 
social position, who loved the Lord Jesus. 
Against the advice of friends, and with the 
known disapprobation of king and court, he 
declined to attend upon the fashionable amuse- 
ments of Dresden. Desire for civil promotion 
had no place in his heart; indeed he pleaded 



lect.iio COUNSELOR AND EDUCATOR. 49 

against it. While at Dresden he also occupied 
leisure hours with editing a periodical called The 
Grerman Socrates^ in which he reproved the preju- 
dices and immoralities of his fellow-citizens. The 
time had now come for the Count to enter form- 
ally upon the possession of his paternal inherit- 
ance; but as difficulties arose relating to sums 
due on certain of his estates, he waived his right, 
rather than resort to litigation; and then, pur- 
chasing Berthelsdorf, received homage as lord of 
the manor (May 19, 1722). The revenue from 
this manor he set apart in aid of the Moravians ; 
and as might be expected, was intent upon the 
religious welfare of his vassals on the newly- 
acqtiired estate. 

Resigning his place at the Saxon Court, Zinzen- 
dorf was now at liberty to follow the bent of his 
heart. Those impoverished exiles from Bohemia, 
of whom a sketch was given in the previous lec- 
ture, enlisted his lively sympathies. Much time 
was devoted to their spiritual instruction and 
comfort ; nor did he shrink from the humblest 
services. This congregation of fugitives he 
regarded as "a parish destined for him from 
eternity ; " and never did a band of Christian 
fugitives find more generous or more efficient 
guardianship. Their ecclesiastical constitution, 
their social relations and habits in their new 
home were jet to be formed ; and his hand, 
guided by ardent piety, became apparent in the 

4 



50 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.h. 

constitution, usages and spirit of the young 
colony. The arrangement of choirs^ so called — 
a distribution of the community into separate 
classes — and of religious meetings, fast days, 
love feasts and night watches ; a system for con- 
tinuous prayer, after the manner of the Accemitae 
of the fifth century, and for the instruction of 
young men, were among matters that engaged 
his devout interest. The second Saturday of 
each month was devoted to supplication for 
children. 

The first settlement of exiles from Bohemia on 
Zinzendorf's estate took place in his absence; his 
connection with them was purely providential, 
and the direction which he sought to give their 
affairs was not the result of any previous plan, 
but such an outgrowth of divine ordering as led 
him ever afterward to pronounce it the work of 
God. The Count's earliest personal introduction 
among the Brethren occurred during a visit to 
the estate on his marriage tour. 1 Evening had 
come ; and while passing, he notices a light in a 
dwelling which had been built during his ab- 

1 Dr. Philip Doddridge, in a letter to Dr. Samuel Clark 
(1737), speaking of Zinzendorf and the Moravians, makes numer- 
ous mistakes, and among them this : they " were discovered 
by their unknown Lord of the Manor, the Count, as he rode one 
morning hunting." Correspondence and Diary, III, 262. There 
is not the slightest foundation in fact for this statement ; and 
yet it has as much foundation as the allegations in sundry 
other writers which reflect upon the Count. 



lect.ii.] ORDINATION AND MINISTRY. 51 

sence. Being told that it was the house of the 
refugees from Moravia, he leaves the carriage, 
enters, gives them a hearty welcome, and then 
kneels with them in earnest prayer, commending 
them to God. 

In 1737 Zinzendorf was ordained a bishop of the 
Moravian Church. In his former capacity, that 
of deacon or catechist, he labored subordinately 
to Pastor Rothe, whom he had himself presented 
to the living of Berthelsdorf, a Lutheran Church, 
and within whose parish Herrnhut was at that 
time included. But as Superintendent or Warden, 
Zinzendorf had a responsibility for Moravians not 
only at this, their center, but in the various settle- 
ments which from time to time sprang up in differ- 
ent parts of the continent. Discordant elements 
had come together. There were fugitive colonists 
of different nationalities, with no resources, but 
with convictions deeply fixed ; while to them were 
added accessions of floating dissentients from the 
then prevailing spirit and life of Germany, many 
of them as narrow-minded as they were devout. 
In one instance, on receiving a number of persons 
to the church, Zinzendorf found that no two of 
them belonged to the same nationality, one being 
a native of Poland, another of Hungary, a third 
of Switzerland, the fourth an Englishman, the fifth 
a Swede, the sixth a Livonian and the seventh 
a German. To fuse materials so diverse into 
an harmonious body required consummate tact 



52 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

and patience. Nothing less than his Christian 
love could furnish the needed solvent. His plan, 
however, was not to organize a distinct sect, but 
to gather little circles or communities of renewed 
persons — ecclesioloe in ecclesia, an Israel within 
Israel — much after the ideas of Spener, ideas 
which governed the early Wesleyan practice in 
England, so long as avowed separation from the 
Established Church was discountenanced. He dis- 
couraged formal withdrawment from the Lu- 
theran or the Reformed Church, but aimed to 
win souls to Christ, and to build them up in faith 
and love within existing communities. 1 Colonies 
or communities of the Unitas Fratrum were to 
some extent encouraged by ruling powers; and 
wherever formed, Zinzendorf sought acquaintance 
with the individual members, and labored dili- 
gently for their good, as well as for a wise admin- 
istration of the entire body. Distasteful and 
repulsive surroundings never dampened his zeal. 
The Ronneberg Castle, 2 for instance, was a place 
so forbidding that his friend Christian David 
advised against going there. "Have you not 
been in Greenland, Christian ? " said the Count. 
" Yes, if it were only Greenland ! " replied his 
friend. He took up his abode there for a time ; 

1 The circumstances under which Herrnhut originated for- 
bade making a creed the basis of union ; Christian love rather 
than doctrine became the vital bond. 

2 Thirty-five miles from Frankfort-on-the-Main. 



lect.ii.] ORDINATION AND MINISTRY. 53 

and at once set about providing religious instruc- 
tion for the rude and neglected people of the 
neighborhood. He established schools for poor 
children, whom he clothed and fed at his own 
expense. But his fidelity as a witness to Christ's 
cross and crown was not limited to the humble ; 
he testified before kings. To a royal princess 
of Denmark he said (1731): "Christians are 
God's people, begotten of his Spirit, obedient to 
him, enkindled by his fire ; his blood is their 
glory. Before the majesty of the betrothed of 
God, kingly crowns grow pale ; a hut to them 
becomes a palace. Sufferings under which heroes 
would pine are gladly borne by loving hearts 
which have grown strong through the cross." 

At Herrnhut and elsewhere, revivals of marked 
character sometimes occurred, one such in 1727, 
when, after a good deal of discussion, a remark- 
able spirit of love and union was manifested. 
"The whole place," says Zinzendorf, "repre- 
sented truly a visible tabernacle of God among 
men, and till the thirteenth of August there was 
nothing to be seen and heard but joy and glad- 
ness ; then this uncommon joy subsided, and a 
calmer sabbatic period succeeded." A marked 
simultaneous experience was noted by certain 
Brethren at the Orphan House in Sablat, begin- 
ning on the same day. 

In journeying from place to place, and at differ- 
ent resting places, Zinzendorf sometimes had a 



54 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. n. 

retinue of fifty persons, his immediate family, 
associates in office, religious helpers and other 
attendants, constituting a Pilgrim or Missionary 
Church, 1 a "church in the house," which main- 
tained regular religious worship as well as en- 
gaged in local Christian work. This was every- 
where an " Inner Mission," a home mission, though 
a very expensive arrangement. 

Wherever he was, the Count improved oppor- 
tunities for preaching. His delight was to bear 
witness to the love of Christ, and to enlarge upon 
some essential point of vital religion, which enters 
alike into the experience of every spiritually- 
minded Christian. A suggestion by him to other 
ministers was well observed by himself: "In 
order to preach aright," says the Count, "take 
three looks before every sermon : one at the depth 
of thy wretchedness, another at the depth of 
human wretchedness all around thee, and a third 
at the love of God in Jesus; so that, empty of 
self, and full of compassion towards thy fellow- 
men, thou mayest be able to administer God's 
comfort to souls." His sermons, always extem- 

1 The literal translation of the German name Pilger-gemeine, 
the one adopted by Count Zinzendorf, is a congregation of pil- 
grims; but as the use of the term is more limited in the English 
than in the German language, and consequently liable to be 
misunderstood by an English reader, the author has substituted 
the word Missionary, which in its present application contains 
a more correct idea of this institution. Holmes's History, I, 265, 
note. 



lect. ii.] SIFTING PEEIOD. 55 

poraneous and never written out by himself, 
were often taken down in short-hand quite inac- 
curately; and being published without revision, 
sometimes did him great injustice. There were 
occasions when he discoursed with great power, 
and hearers were affected to tears. In Berlin, 
the street where such meetings were held was 
often lined with coaches. Those discourses, trans- 
lated into various languages and widely scattered, 
would authorize the Count to say : " Berlin was 
only my pulpit; the sermons are for all the 
world." Zinzendorf aimed to keep close to the 
Bible ; in later years he read but few other 
books. "The theology of blood" was a phrase 
of his own, and the great atoning sacrifice con- 
tinued to be his principal theme of discourse. To 
the spirit of religious extravagance — amounting, 
indeed, to a practical monomania at the " Sifting 
Period," so called (1744-1749)— he unwittingly 
contributed ; but no sooner was that tendency 
discovered than he set about correcting the evil ; 
and the complete recovery of himself and the 
Brethren from such an infection is a rare in- 
stance of the kind, and shows a prevailing sound- 
ness of heart and understanding. 

We must linger for a little on that brief period 
to which allusion has been made. The theology 
of Zinzendorf and of the Unitas Fratrum, then 
at least, was too much a theology of feeling. 
Dwelling sometimes almost excessively on the 



56 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Cmct.il 

sufferings of Christ and on the purely physical 
accompaniments of those sufferings; concentrat- 
ing thought thereon, and in a fanciful manner; 
not duly considering the balanced method, the 
sobriety of Scripture representation, they fell into 
the use of imagery and phraseology that were 
nauseous to men of sound sense and correct 
taste. A stream of sentimentalism, maudlin and 
puerile, was poured forth for a time. Exaggerated 
and ill-directed emotion issued finally in a sort 
of infectious fanaticism. It was like the disease 
known as fatty degeneration of the heart; and 
it spread for awhile into many of the continental 
communities, measurably also to those of Eng- 
land, though not to communities in our own 
country. 

That brief period of deterioration carries with 
it a warning for all other Christian communities 
and assemblies, relative to indulgence in over- 
wrought feeling, and to excessive use of sensuous 
imagery. The Bible is the most thoroughly con- 
servative book in the world, and its aesthetic 
tone is most divinely healthful ; but its benign 
power resides in the contents as a whole, not in 
any pet passage, and especially not in a distorted 
setting forth of one truth, however valuable, apart 
from scriptural and logical limitations. On the 
other hand, how much will the Lord overlook in 
a church or an individual holding to the prime 
fact of salvation through our adorable Redeemer 



LECT. II.] 



SIFTING PERIOD. 57 



alone, and of vital union by faith to him, a union 
evinced practically in the life ! 

It should be kept in mind that none have criti- 
cised or deplored that season of mawkish enthu- 
siasm more than Moravians themselves; yet it 
helped to create a permanent prejudice. Not 
much, however, is it to the credit of men in other 
communions that they should continue to fling in 
the face of a church — which now for more than 
a century has held on its way in irreproachable 
sobriety — as a living blemish, that which was 
buried so long ago, and over whose moss-covered 
tombstone none grieve more sincerely than the 
men of Herrnhut themselves. Extremely unfair 
is it to adduce the hymns of that exceptional 
endemic, in proof of permanent maladies among 
the United Brethren. Imperfectly as Robert 
Southey, for example, could appreciate Wesley 
and the Methodists, still less could he appreciate 
Zinzendorf and the Moravians. But nothing is 
more spicy, more difficult to arrest, than popular 
calumny ; nothing dies so hard a death. 

In London some of the early Moravians, from 
1739 to 1749, were not the most favorable repre- 
sentatives of the life and spirit of Herrnhut. A 
portion of them fell into Antinomianism and by 
anticipation into Plymouth Brethrenism. They 
indulged in sentimentalities, became self-involved, 
self-conceited, censorious; were greatly lacking 
in breadth and Christian manliness. They were 



58 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect n. 

a different set of men from those with whom 
Wesley crossed the Atlantic in 1736, whose per- 
fect composure and whose song of praise amidst 
a terrific storm, when the English passengers 
were screaming with terror, so impressed him. 
Nor were a majority of those in England at that 
period fair specimens of the community at Ma- 
rienborn, as it was when Wesley wrote to his 
brother Samuel (1738) : " God has given me at 
length the desire of my heart. I am with a 
church whose conversation is ■ in heaven ; in 
whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who 
so walk as he walked. As they have all one 
Lord and one faith, so they are all partakers of 
one Spirit — the Spirit of meekness and love, 
which uniformly and continually animates all 
their conversation." Nor did the English Mora- 
vians of the decade now spoken of illustrate the 
sobriety of the parent community at Herrnhut, 
to which, after his return from the Continent, he 
wrote: "Glory be to God, even the Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, for giving me to be an 
eye-witness of your faith, and love, and holy con- 
versation in Christ Jesus ! " l 

At a later date difficulties arose ; and Wesley, 
not without reason, severed his connection with 
the United Brethren in England. Whitefield, in 

1 His visit to Herrnhut no doubt suggested to Wesley the 
love feasts, division of members into classes, and class meetings, 
which he not long after adopted. 



lect.ii.] ZINZENDORF AND WESLEY. 59 

his customary haste of judgment, wrote criticisms 
which he might better have withheld. It was 
unfortunate that the whole body of the Moravians 
should come under consequent censure. Two 
such men as Zinzendorf and Wesley, men of com- 
manding talent, of great independence, of great 
will-power, and both born to rule, seldom get on 
well together, for any length of time, this side of 
New Jerusalem. It was Greek meeting Greek. 
The former carried a noble, genial countenance 
which, with his person and majestic bearing, 
would attract notice on the streets of Berlin, 
Amsterdam and London. Under all his humility, 
which was genuine, you could still see the Ger- 
man nobleman. At times, though not often, he 
seemed imperious and harsh. He was impressible 
and impulsive. John Wesley was marvelously 
self-poised; had rare perspicacity; had clear-cut 
Anglo-Saxon sense, which needs much grace 
when it has to deal with mystic Germanism. 
Each had a purpose, compact and consistent; 
each by his position was obliged to be autocratic ; 
but Wesley exacted the more unqualified sub- 
mission. That feature of administration, required 
at the time in each case, would not now be toler- 
ated in either. To a high degree Zinzendorf pos- 
sessed the power of organizing men; Wesley the 
power of organizing men and ideas ; Whitefield 
possessed neither in any unusual measure. Wes- 
ley was a theologian ; Zinzendorf was not. The 



60 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.ii. 

writings of the one are characterized by great 
purity and precision of style ; the other's writings 
are sometimes obscure, often bizarre. But let this 
dead past remain in its tomb. Was all New Eng- 
land tainted with the vagaries of Anne Hutchin- 
son ? Or, had that been true, would it detract 
from the present soundness and sobriety of our 
churches, after the lapse of two hundred and fifty 
years ? Was it a legitimate petition of the Psalm- 
ist : " Oh, Lord ! remember not the sins of my 
youth ; " and may not every church in Christen- 
dom well pray that the mistakes of their early 
days be not remembered against them by sister 
churches ? z 

The Count's authorship was prolific — about 
a hundred and fifty publications making their 
appearance, chiefly in the German language, 
though sundry tracts were in Latin, French and 
English. His style, that of the period, often 
exhibits an admixture of terms from classical and 
modern languages. His writings bear the stamp 



1 In the providence of God it was well that Seifferth dis- 
suaded Wesley from joining the Moravian church in Georgia, 
telling him that God had given him a different calling in which 
he might become more useful. But it is particularly unfortu- 
nate that Wesley in his day, and that in our day Tyerman, 
author of the excellent work, Life and Times of John Wesley, 
should, like some others, give credence to a pamphlet by Henry 
Rimius, entitled, A Candid Narrative of the Rise and Progress of 
the Herrnhutters, etc. Rimius was a bitter and untruthful enemy 
of the Unitas Fratrum. 



LECT.no CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITS. 61 

of originality ; yet owing in part to the vividness 
of his imagination, are not free from singularities 
and irregularities. Zinzendorf is the Charles 
Wesley of the United Brethren and of Germany 
in his time; his poetical effusions number more 
than two thousand. Beginning at twelve years 
of age, he composed hymns with the greatest 
ease ; indeed, would not unfrequently extem- 
porize one in connection with worship ; and — 
what is yet more singular — he could easily sing 
extemporaneous hymns without previous reflec- 
tion, and was known to improvise eight in a 
single day. Such a habit could not fail to be- 
come a snare ; carelessness with regard to poetic 
form and finish was inevitable. Yet it must be 
confessed that few have tuned the harp to a more 
fervid celebration of redeeming love. 

His imagination, lively though not perfectly 
disciplined, drew him toward the mystical, and 
but for a quick discernment, and his concentrated 
practical spirit, might have betrayed him into 
wild excess. Versatile in genius, his career some- 
times bordering upon the romantic, the Count 
still showed statesmanlike qualities. He under- 
stood men, and had a wide acquaintance with 
princes, noblemen, university professors, as well 
as peasants and artisans, persons of divergent 
belief and various nationalities ; and his vigorous 
pursuit of definite benevolent aims kept him from 
wasting strength in visionary schemes. His in- 



62 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, n. 

dustry was indefatigable. Even during the last 
four months of his life, with bodily powers much 
reduced, he delivered one hundred and twenty 
discourses, besides composing hymns and attend- 
ing to various duties. The minute superintend- 
ence of communities numerous and widely sepa- 
rated — in Germany, where were eleven, in Russia, 
Norway, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, England, 
not to mention missionary stations that were 
multiplying — -and the direction of interests so 
various, ecclesiastical, civil, educational, financial, 
did not prevent patient labor with individuals. 
Journeying or stationary, on land or on shipboard, 
he still looked for opportunities to lead particular 
souls to Christ. 

As regards pecuniary concerns, Zinzendorf did 
not practice due caution. Confiding in others, 
sometimes in those who were incompetent or 
indiscreet ; generous almost to a fault, he allowed 
himself to come under obligations beyond his 
means ; and so his estate became heavily encum- 
bered. The Count's own habits were anything 
but self-indulgent, immediate personal expenses 
not exceeding fifty pounds a year. * No one 
could be farther removed than Zinzendorf from 
hypocrisy, and from attempts at concealing his 
own defects. Once perceived by himself, his 

x "No one can say," he remarked late in life, "that I have 
made myself rich. For many years I have not been worth a 
hundred Thaler s at one time." 



lect.ii.] MISUNDERSTOOD AND CALUMNIATED. 63 

errors and mistakes were readily acknowledged. 
He exhibited an unusual combination of gentle 
kindliness and firmness. Like Athanasius contra 
mundum, Zinzendorf, in matters of principle and 
of conscience, fulfilled the family motto, " I yield 
to none ; neither to one, nor to all." I " If God 
will employ me in his kingdom, I will bid defiance 
to the whole world ; " so he spoke, so he acted. 
He was not a vehement disputant, but usually 
respected the opinions of others; and for a man 
in his position, not averse to the exercise of power, 
nor to the energetic maintenance of official juris- 
diction, he was unusually tolerant. A friend of 
religious liberty and an enemy of persecution, his 
sympathies in behalf of the injured were always 
prompt. 

Never was a man more thoroughly calumniated. 
Good men sometimes distrusted and abused him ; 
while the enemies of a cross-bearing piety poured 
forth streams of envenomed libels. " It was just 
as it frequently happens," said Bishop Spangen- 
berg, " in small towns, when any one cries ' Fire ! ' 
many people run out of their houses into the 
streets and also cry i Fire ! ' often without know- 
ing whether there is a fire, or where it is." The 
Bishop counted up accusations amounting to 
more than seventeen hundred, which, together 
with the answers and appendices, were printed 

1 Ich weiche nicht, nicht einem, nicht alien. 



64 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

in three quarto volumes (1751). King Freder- 
ick William of Prussia, having been prejudiced 
against him, made personal investigation con- 
tinuing through five days, and then declared that 
the Count's only crime was that, being a person 
of noble rank, he had devoted himself to the 
ministry. " The devils in hell," said the mon- 
arch, " could not have fabricated worse lies." 
" Towers are measured," says a Chinese prov- 
erb, " by their shadows, and great men by those 
who are envious of them." 

But how did Zinzendorf bear slander? While 
few have encountered a greater amount of de- 
traction, still fewer have borne it with a temper 
more truly Christian. Personal attacks he passed 
by, to repel attacks upon the loyalty of Herrn- 
hut and upon truth and evangelical Christian- 
ity. As regards the intrusion of civil govern- 
ment into the domain of religious belief, he was 
far in advance of his times ; and, naturally, 
advocates of the divine right of kings and 
the union of Church and State, pronounced his 
views to be subversive of the State. Even a ten 
years' banishment from his estates and from 
Herrnhut, the center of his official and affection- 
ate interest, procured through false accusations 
by his enemy, Count Briihl, called forth no invec- 
tives and no wailings. Reputation might suffer; 
character shone all the brighter. His forbearance 
and meekness under injuries were truly Christ- 



iect.ii.] MISUNDERSTOOD AND CALUMNIATED. 65 

like ; and he was finally vindicated. In the 
drawing-room of Hennersclorf, there met, in the 
year 1749, a Royal Commission sent down by 
the Saxon government at Zinzendorf's request. 
It was the third commission of the kind. Every 
facility was afforded for inquiry into the doc- 
trines and manner of life at Herrnhut, and into 
the Count's relations to the Brethren. As in 
each previous instance, Zinzendorf and the Mora- 
vians were completely exonerated; and one of 
his bitterest opponents, who had publicly ma- 
ligned him, became an ardent friend. 

It should be stated, however, that the Count 
lived and acted under much excitement; that 
his mental operations were rapid ; his decisions 
quickly formed; and, whatever might stand in 
the way, he went straight to the execution of 
them. Occasional excess and indiscretion were 
matters of course. But all men of strong char- 
acter and of independent opinions must have 
peculiarities, not to say eccentricities, in the eye 
of the average man. * Men devoid of genius, 
phlegmatic, governed by selfish prudence or by 
the dominant worldliness of that age, were sure 
to discern only singularities in his conduct. To 
turn one's back on the gayeties of court, surren- 
dering civil dignities, making one's self all things 



1 II n'appartient qu'aux grands hornmes d'avoir de grands defauts. 
La Kochefoucauld. 



66 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

to all men that he might save some, was too 
apostolic and too strange a thing then not to be 
deemed a proof of mental unsoundness. To the 
average Christian in any decayed church such a 
character will seem an offensive enigma. Thanks 
that in our day it is no anomaly for a nobleman 
to devote himself to evangelistic labors ! We are 
glad to be contemporary with Lord Radstock, 
Lord Carrick, Lord Kintore, Lord Polwarth, Lord 
Alfred Churchill, brother of the Duke of Marl- 
borough, Lord Adalbert Cecil, brother of the 
Marquis of Exeter, and the Earl of Cavan, who, 
though unordained, have engaged in the work of 
preaching. 

Preeminently was Zinzendorf a man of faith 
and prayer; but devotion to Christ is the chief 
jewel in that crown which must be awarded to 
him. Intimate communion with the Lord Jesus 
and loyalty to him characterized the Count from 
childhood onward. At the dawn of manhood he 
wrote : " I would rather be despised and hated 
for the sake of Jesus, than be beloved for my own 
sake." At a later period : " I am, as ever, a poor 
sinner, a captive of eternal love, running by the 
side of His triumphal chariot, and have no desire 
to be anything else as long as I live." " I have 
one passion," he exclaims in a sermon at Herrn- 
hut, "and it is He, He alone ! " — a motto which 
the late Professor Tholuck, on entering the de- 
partment of Divinity at Halle, adopted as his 



lect.ii.] RULING MOTIVES. 67 

own — Ich "haV eine Passion, und die est Er, 
nur JEr. Toil and obloquy could not make him 
other than a happy man. As on his journey to 
the Russian Province of Livonia so might he 
often have testified : " All the way to Riga I 
swam in peace and joy in the Lord, and walked 
on the shores of the Baltic with a delighted 
heart." 

Such was Count Zinzendorf, one of the most 
remarkable personages of modern times. Unos- 
tentatious in spirit, his life dramatic, he was the 
Protestant Loyola of that day ; in his remarkable 
career supremely devoted to the only Mediator 
between God and men. He was founder and 
leader, true to one high aim from childhood till 
the day of his death, at threescore years (1760). 
Ignatius Loyola once said to Xavier : " Eternity 
alone, Francis, is sufficient for such a heart as 
yours ; its kingdom of glory alone is worthy of 
it. Be ambitious; be magnanimous; but level 
at the loftiest mark." Moved by the Holy 
Spirit, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, when a youth of 
nineteen, could say : " Eternity alone fills my 
thoughts;" and at the same age, amidst the 
seductions of foreign travel, he adopts for his 
motto JEternitati. x 

We turn to the Count's more immediate 
part in Moravian evangelistic movements. That 

l Le Comte de Zinzendorf , par Felix Bovet. Liv. Prem. 



68 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

which gave unity and grandeur to his life was 
an absorbing, persistent missionary zeal. While 
in the family of Professor Franke at Halle, he 
had opportunities to hear religious intelligence, 
and occasional opportunities to become acquaint- 
ed with missionaries. From the time of entering 
school in Halle, at ten years of age, he formed 
successive associations of youths like-minded with 
himself, one of which took the name, Senfkorn- 
Orden — "The Order of the Grain of Mustard- 
Seed." Its members pledged themselves to con- 
fess Christ faithfully, to exercise love toward 
their neighbors, and to seek the conversion of 
others, both Jews and the heathen. The badge 
of the Senfkorn-Orden was a shield, with an 
JScce Homo, and the inscription, "His wounds 
our healing." Among their insignia was a ring 
with this motto, " None of us liveth to himself 
alone." The very first article of that youthful 
confederation shows the bent of his heart, and 
was a prophecy of his future : " The members 
of our society will love the whole human family." 
During the stay of our young Count in Holland, 
he was making inquiries about unevangelized 
nations. In the history of foreign missions is 
there a fact more significant than that, years 
before Herrnhut had name or existence, a lad 
of fifteen, in a German University town, should 
be divinely led to entertain such thoughts — 
thoughts so foreign to the prevailing church spirit 



ijsct.ii.] EARLY MISSIONARY INTEREST. 69 

of that period, and usually so foreign to this 
period of life, especially among the class in society 
to which young Zinzendorf belonged ? 

Noteworthy, also, is the fact of a coincidence 
in the year 1715. That was the year when a 
revival breath from heaven passed simultaneously 
over towns wholly disconnected and remote from 
one another, in Moravia and Bohemia. The all- 
wise God had Herrnhut in mind ; and, in his 
gracious designs, Herrnhut was to be the cradle 
of missions. The men, humble, ill-informed, 
whom Divine Providence was preparing to guide 
thither as exiles, would require the influence of 
a superior, cultured, consecrated mind, so broad- 
ened as to take the headship of a new community 
which was to have its seat in Upper Lusatia, but 
to have its missions at the ends of the earth. For 
a prepared people, a prepared leader would be 
needed. At the very hour of spiritual quicken- 
ing in those Tzech towns, this German youth of 
noble birth and high promise is under an inward 
impulse to attempt the salvation of many souls ; 
and with a companion like-minded, the Baron 
von Watteville, he enters into a covenant con- 
cerning the conversion of the heathen, and espe- 
cially such heathen as no one else would regard. 
For that period they were the men of the Will- 
iamstown haystack. 

When Zinzendorf married it was "in the Lord," 
and with the concentrated purpose of making 



70 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

domestic life auxiliary to his well-defined Chris- 
tian aim. Concerning the Countess about to 
become his fiancee, he wrote : " She will have to 
cast all ideas of rank and qualitj^ to the winds, as 
I have done ; for they are not things of divine 
institution, but inventions of human vanity. If 
she wishes to aid me she must give herself to 
what is the sole object of my life; namely, to 
win souls to Christ, and that in the midst of 
contempt and reproach." Upon their affiance 
they covenanted to stand ready, at a moment's 
warning from the Lord, to enter upon mission 
work, prepared to meet all the obloquy it in- 
volved. x In the Countess Erdmuth Dorothea, 
sister of his friend Henry XXIX, Count of Reuss, 
Zinzendorf found one fully in accord with his own 
religious sympathies, and fitted to cooperate in 
the noble work before him. Like his grandfather, 
who, in leaving Austria for the truth's sake, left 
earthly possessions behind him, he himself accept- 
ed the royal mandate of banishment (1736) in 
the firm belief that God's providence would make 
his exile subservient to the interests of the church 
and to the spread of the gospel. The result con- 
firmed his conviction. "That place," said he, 
giving utterance to a beautiful sentiment — "that 

1 The covenant entered into with his bride, on the day of 
marriage, ran thus : Auf des Herrn Wink alle Stunden den Pil- 
gerstab in die Hand zu nehmen, und zu den Heiden zu gehen, urn 
ihnen den Heiland zu predigen. 



lect.ii.] FIEST MISSION. 71 

place is our proper home where we have the 
greatest opportunity of laboring for our Sav- 
iour. Now we must collect a missionary con- 
gregation, and train laborers to go forth into all 
the world and preach Christ and his salvation." 
An educational institution was established in 
the Wetterau (1739), and it called forth Zin- 
zendorf's hearty interest. It had special refer- 
ence to mission work, and in his congregation 
were forty students from Jena, the greater part 
of whom became missionaries or preachers at 
home. 

The year (1727} in which Zinzendorf obtained 
leave of absence from the Court of Saxony, and 
devoted himself more entirely to the interests of 
the Unitas Fratrum, was to them a year of mem- 
orable refreshing from on high; and also the year 
when four evangelistic movements were made by 
them on the Continent of Europe — to Voigtland, 
Saalfeld, Denmark and Hungary. The next year 
more distant countries, Lapland, Turkey and 
Ethiopia, are spoken of. The practicability of 
evangelizing Greenlanders, negro slaves and other 
rude and remote peoples, is discussed ; and though 
no encouragement appears to present itself, the 
Count feels sure that a door will be opened to 
them into heathendom. Two or more years later 
the Count revisits Copenhagen at the coronation 
of Christian VI of Denmark — with whom, as 
with many of the royal houses of Germany, he 



72 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

was connected by marriage — and one result is 
that information comes to Herrnhut which deeply 
interests certain members of the Unity. After, 
hearing those statements, a young man, Leonhard 
Dober, cannot sleep that night, so deeply has he 
been impressed by the thought of a call to mis- 
sion work in St. Thomas. Another young man, 
Tobias Leupold, is also moved, independently of 
his friend Dober, to consecrate himself to this 
work. The two men were at the time working 
with pick and spade on the Hutberg ; and, having 
first earnestly sought divine guidance, they made 
known their thoughts to one another. The even- 
ing of the same day, and before communicating 
their desire to any one else, Dober and Leupold, 
with a company who are accustomed to go round 
the village singing hymns, pass Zinzendorf 's door. 
The Count comes to the door with a clerical 
friend, 1 then visiting him, to whom he remarks: 
" Sir, among these brethren there are missionaries 
to the heathen in St. Thomas, Greenland," etc. 
This coincidence leads the two young men to 
make known their thoughts to the Count by 
letter, who in turn encourages them, recommend- 
ing that the matter be committed to the Lord for 
direction. The spirit which originated the "Or- 
der of the Grain of Mustard-Seed " has not 
abated, but is about to bring forth its first foreign 

1 Pastor Schaffer of Gorlitz. 



lect.iio FIRST MISSION. 73 

fruit. In their letter, the names not attached, 
communicated to the congregation, they avow 
their readiness to sacrifice life in the service of 
Christ, and, if need be, sell themselves into bond- 
age, in order that they might save one soul. 
From this declaration has arisen the traditional 
statement that some of the Brethren actually sold 
themselves as slaves in order to gain access to 
that abject class — a transaction which never 
occurred. ' 

The proposal of the two young men was not 
at first received with any marked favor by the 
church generally, who deemed it at least prema- 
ture. So was the proposition of William Carey, 
sixty years afterwards, to consider " the duty of 
Christians to attempt the spread of the gospel 
among heathen nations," and Dr. Eyland ex- 
claimed, " Young man, sit down ! " In Scotland 
the opinion was publicly expressed (1796) that 
the General Assembly ought decisively to oppose 
the formation of missionary societies. When the 
American Board was formed (1810), the prevail- 
ing sentiment among Congregational churches 
proved to be adverse to any such scheme. Simi- 
lar was the case with the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in 1816-1819. The earliest of those just 

1 A statement to that effect has often been made. Even so 
careful a writer as Prof. H. B. Hackett says : " Some of the 
Moravian missionaries sold themselves into slavery that they 
might preach to slaves." See Lange on Philemon, 28. 



74 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ii. 

named, however, that of the English Baptists, 
was more than half a century after German Mo- 
ravians had demonstrated the practicability of 
success in this line of Christian effort. 

The Count's evangelistic zeal was far beyond 
that of his period, and especially as regards men of 
his own rank. " Thanks," said a contemporary 
of his in England, the Countess of Huntingdon, 
"thanks for the letter m in that passage, 'Not 
many noble are called.'" Among Zinzendorf's 
countrymen it had not indeed been true that not 
any noblemen stood forth conspicuously as wit- 
nesses for Christ. There was Christopher, Duke 
of Wiirtemberg, in the sixteenth century, a man 
who loved God's Word, who loved prayer, and 
sought the highest welfare of his people ; and at 
the same period, Frederick III, Elector Palatine, 
deservedly surnamed the Pious. The seventeenth 
century presents us another Prince, rightfully 
called the Pious — Ernst, Duke of Saxony. We 
must, however, advance to the eighteenth century 
to find a nobleman dedicating his entire time and 
possessions to the service of our Saviour, and mak- 
ing it the sole aim of life, by personal efforts, at 
home and abroad, to win the largest possible 
number of souls to Christ, and that, too, in a 
period of general religious decline, and for many 
years a time of war. From childhood onward, 
lip and life were thus consecrated. No other 
German, neither Gossner of Berlin, nor Harms of 



uM3T.no TITLED CHRISTIANS. 75 

Hermannsburg, has been engaged in sending out 
missionaries to so many countries. In his day 
he was the John Howard of foreign evangelism. 
If called upon to name an utterance of modern 
times, which, in view of all circumstances, indi- 
cates the broadest, clearest, most sympathetic 
apprehension of apostolic evangelism, should we 
not repeat this one of the Count? x — " The whole 
earth is the Lord's; men!s souls are all his; I 
am debtor to all." Well entitled is Zinzendorf 's 
bust to the place it holds among the great men 
of Germany, in the Walhalla near Ratisbon. 
With the closing words of his epitaph let this 
lecture close : " He was ordained that he should 
bring forth fruit, and that his fruit should 
remain." 

1 At a Church Conferenence in Holland, 1741. 



LECTUKE III. 

MISSION TO THE WEST INDIES. 



MISSION TO THE WEST INDIES 



The birth of great men and the beginning of 
great movements will make any year notewor- 
thy. Seventeen hundred and thirty-two gave to 
America George Washington ; to France Lalande, 
the celebrated astronomer; to Germany Adelung, 
the eminent philologist, and Haydn, the eminent 
composer. In the history of gospel propagation 
there are two events of special significance which 
take us back to the Fatherland and to the year 
just named. It was in seventeen hundred and 
thirty-two that the missionary Schultze completed 
a translation of the New Testament into Hindu- 
stani, and that the first foreign enterprise of the 
Moravians had its rise. Only ten years had 
elapsed since the earlier fugitives from Bohemia 
settled at Herrnhut, and their census showed a 
population of but six hundred souls, old and 
young — a number exceeded by the membership 
in some of our local churches; yet — few, poor, 
isolated as they were — they undertook a mission 
beyond sea. 

A negro slave of Cortez, finding three grains 
of wheat among the rice which had been brought 
from Europe to provision the Spanish army, was 

(79) 



80 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

the first to introduce that valuable product into 
New Spain ; a slave also became the occasion of 
introducing the incorruptible seed of the gospel 
into the West Indies. When, as mentioned in 
the last lecture, Count Zinzendorf was at Copen- 
hagen, attending the coronation of King Christian 
VI, some of his attendants met a negro named 
Anthony, in the service of Count Lauervig, who 
dwelt upon the sad condition of Africans in St. 
Thomas, and particularly that of his sister, who 
was desirous of being taught the true religion. 
This man afterwards visited Herrnhut, and a 
simultaneous desire was kindled independently 
in the hearts of two young men to devote them- 
selves to gospel work among the slaves. One of 
the two, Leonhard Dober, was a potter by trade ; 
and with him was associated David Mtschmann, 
a carpenter, 1 who was to accompany Dober to 
the field, and then return. Their funds amounted 
to a trifle over three dollars apiece. Count Zin- 
zendorf took them in his carriage as far as Baut- 
zen, and then, with a blessing, bade them God- 
speed. A bundle on the back their only luggage, 
they set out thence on foot for the capital of 
Denmark, a distance of six hundred miles. Pious 
persons, on whom they called by the way, tried 
to dissuade them, the devout Countess of Stol- 

1 The Eev. E. Garbett speaks mistakenly as if both of them 
were potters by trade. 



lect.iii.] DOBER AND NITSCHMANN. 81 

berg at Wernigerode, a third of the distance to 
Copenhagen, being the only one who spoke an 
encouraging word. But special service for God 
never fails of special help from God. They reach 
Copenhagen, though only to meet with great diffi- 
culties at first, ridicule and opposition, very much 
as, fourteen years before (1718), Hans Egede did 
at Bergen, while trying to find his way to Green- 
land. They were told that no captain would 
take them on board his ship ; that, if they reached 
St. Thomas, they would be unable to support 
themselves. Frightful stories were related about 
the ferocity of the Caribs. The two Brethren did 
not argue the matter, and made but little effort 
to answer objections; they simply kept quietly 
about their business of trying to reach the West 
Indies, ready to go into slavery themselves in 
order to reach the negroes, as Anthony had repre- 
sented would be necessary. An unseen hand was 
guiding, the Adorable Comforter was sustaining 
these devoted men. Their Christian constancy 
won favor, and at last efficient sympathy, The 
royal chaplains became interested ; so did a few 
other high officials, who gave enough to pay their 
fare out, as well as to procure tools for carrying 
on their trades. Some members of the royal 
family, among them the queen, lent their aid. 
The Princess Amelia, unsolicited, gave them 
money toward their expenses, and a large Dutch 
Bible, which proved a seasonable gift; for, being 

6 



82 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

refused passage on any Danish ship, they were 
compelled to avail themselves of one from Hol- 
land, and embarked October 8, 1732. Here, too, 
as often, the good hand of God was visible in the 
very disappointment. St. Thomas had been in 
possession of the Netherlands ; the negroes spoke 
Dutch, though an imperfect Dutch, and our mis- 
sionaries now had opportunity, during their voy- 
age, to learn the language which would be re- 
quired in their work. 

I need not say that the West India Islands 
form a group of rare interest ; one of which, the 
advanced courier of a new world, was the first to 
greet the eye of Columbus. Physical aspect and 
conditions are such as to excite the imagination 
of Europeans even at the present day. Here are 
magnitude and prodigality of vegetable forms 
quite astonishing to men from the temperate 
zones — palm-leaves, one of which will cover four 
persons ; the royal palm towering sometimes two 
hundred feet in the air ; the gigantic cottonwood, 
whose trunk furnishes a canoe for fifty and even 
a hundred men. One of the canoes measured by 
Columbus was ninety-six feet in length. 

The great mass of the inhabitants in our day 
are negroes, the minority being European plant- 
ers and traders, who compose only seventeen per 
cent of a total population which exceeds three 
and a half millions. All the islands except Hayti 
belong to European powers; three of them to 



lect.iii.] ST. THOMAS. 83 

Denmark. As the negro man Anthony came 
from St. Thomas, ajid as there was more of direct 
intercourse between Copenhagen and that island 
than any other, the two Moravians naturally went 
there. St. Thomas belongs to the cluster of Vir- 
gin Islands which form a connecting link between 
the Greater and the Less Antilles — the cluster 
numbering about fifty, yet having an aggregate 
area short of two hundred square miles. St. 
Thomas itself, with a superficies about the same 
as an average New England town, something over 
twenty square miles, and a population of over 
twenty thousand, has a precipitous coast-line ; is 
elevated and rugged; not particularly fertile; 
not well supplied with water ; indeed, toward the 
end of the dry season, drinking-water must be 
brought from St. Croix. As the trees are sup- 
posed to attract showers, no man is allowed to 
cut down a tree even on his own estate. At the 
present time, some of the great European steam- 
ship companies make it a center for their oceanic 
lines. 

Dober and Nitschmann, the day after landing, 
went in search of Anthony's sister, and, finding 
the plantation where she lived with her husband 
and younger brother, they made known An- 
thony's salutation. By request, they opened and 
read his letter to her, in which occurred the 
quotation : " This is life eternal, that they might 
know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 



84 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

whom thou has sent." Beginning then and there, 
they preached the gospel to heathen slaves who 
gathered round. Though the message was in 
German-Dutch, the negroes understood the drift 
of it, and clapped their hands for joy. They had 
hitherto supposed that good things were only for 
white people. While casting about to find how 
they might live at the smallest cost, a planter, 
Mr. Lorenzin, invited them to his house. Nitsch- 
mann, as a carpenter, was able to support himself 
and his associate ; but Dober, unable to find suit- 
able clay, could turn his trade to no good account. 
They improved every opportunity to instruct the 
blacks in divine things, and among those early 
awakened were Anthony's sister and her husband. 
After some months, Nitschmann, according to 
previous arrangement, returned to Europe, but he 
left his little surplus of earnings for Dober's sup- 
port. The latter was for a while employed by 
Governor Gardelin as tutor to his children and 
steward of his household. But the good mission- 
ary became satisfied it was not best for him to 
fare sumptuously, and devote only spare moments 
to the work of the Lord. He was right ; to re- 
main in that comfortable situation would have 
made his mission a failure. Though the Gov- 
ernor parted with him reluctantly, Dober left his 
service, and hired a little lodging in the village 
of Tappus, J where he acted as watchman on 

1 Taphuis = Taphouse. 



lect.iiij IMPRISONMENT. 85 

neighboring plantations, which, with some other 
small services, enabled him to procure bread and 
water. He was now free to work for the Lord, 
and the Lord blessed him. After the departure 
of his associate, a year and four months passed 
before this Christian exile heard from Herrnhut. 
While he is sitting by a watchfire one evening, 
suddenly three men stand before him — one of 
them Tobias Leupold, the intimate friend who 
joined him three years before in a consecration 
to the foreign work. A vessel had just come in, 
bringing missionaries from Herrnhut, destined 
for this and the neighboring island of St. Croix. 
An appointment as General Elder at Herrnhut 
obliged Dober to return to Germany (1735). 

After a while, opposition to the good work be- 
came pronounced ; all intercourse of slaves with 
their teachers was rigorously forbidden ; and, under 
false accusations, the latter were, amidst the sighs 
and tears of interested slaves, thrown into prison. 
On starting for the Fort (October 22, 1738), they 
sang a stanza to this effect : " Mercy is our guide ; 
Mercy prepares the way. Hope opens the pros- 
pect of future bliss. Be firm ! be firm ! " The 
negroes kept up their meetings ; they thronged 
around the windows of the jail, and, listening to 
prayers and singing within, would join in the 
same. " And the prisoners heard them." Sud- 
denly Count Zinzendorf, ignorant of what was 
going on, arrived at St. Thomas (1739) with a 



86 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.iii. 

reinforcement, and, to his surprise, found all the 
missionaries in confinement. The next day, after 
more than three months of suffering, they were 
liberated, with apologies for their imprisonment. 
In the course of a very few days, the Count made 
himself sufficiently familiar with the Creole lan- 
guage to address the negroes, and to write some 
things for their benefit. But he became the 
object of rancorous enmity among " certain lewd 
fellows of the baser sort." l The planters raised 
a tumult, and would scatter the negroes by whip- 
ping and shooting them. One thing which they 
alleged was, that the blacks were likely to become 
better Christians than themselves 2 — an attain- 
ment not very improbable, and which would not 
necessarily imply any great moral elevation above 
barbarism. It was during this visit to the West 
Indies that Zinzendorf composed one of his best- 
known hymns, consisting of thirty-three stanzas, 3 
a few of which are familiar to all through John 
Wesley's translation, beginning : 

* Jesus, thy blood and righteousness." 

He was highly gratified at the extent to which 
Christian labor had proved effectual. There were 

1 Wir waren keinen Tag unseres Lebens sicker. Sie wolten 
Herm Carstens und mich todschlagen. Zinzendorf. 

2 The same objection to Zinzendorf and the Moravians was 
raised in Germany : Sie wollen die Leute zu besseren Christen ma* 
chen als wir sind. 

3 Christi Blut und Gerechtigkeit. 



lect. in.] IMPRISONMENT. 87 

at that time nine hundred concerned in some 
measure for the salvation of their souls, and the 
number was afterward largely increased. A part 
of them came every evening to be taught, all 
instruction being, of course, oral ; but the general 
gathering was on Saturday evening, and they often 
remained in session till seven o'clock Sunday 
morning. Converts as well as teachers suffered 
cruel persecution; bonds and stripes to the last 
degree of severity were endured. The Moravians, 
obliged to work hard by day for their own sup- 
port, at night would teach the slaves. Such being 
their devotedness, was it strange that, by-and-by, 
on one occasion forty, and on another ninety 
persons should receive baptism; and that three 
hundred and eighty should desire at one time 
to be enrolled as catechumens? Governors and 
masters found, at length, that the Christian reli- 
gion was not a bad thing among slaves ; for they 
were more easily managed and their price was 
enhanced. A West India proprietor, in the course 
of debate in the House of Commons, stated ex- 
pressly that a negro member of the Brethren's 
Church had a considerably higher market value 
than an ordinary slave. So deeply had the 
preached word taken effect that Frederick Mar- 
tin, a most excellent missionary, could write 
(1740) : " Hardly a day passes on which we are 
not visited by persons bemoaning their sins and 
crying for mercy. When taking a walk, we hear 



88 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. hi. 

them pray and weep, one in a sugar-field, another 
behind a bush, and a third behind his hut, implor- 
ing the Lord to cleanse them from their sins and 
pollutions." One secret of Moravian successes 
here and elsewhere is, that the missionaries enter 
heartily into their work, and become deeply inter- 
ested in those for whom they labor. The last 
letter written by one of them 1 on St. Thomas 
(1853) gives utterance to what is generally true 
among them : " Never did I love children as 
much as these poor negro children, and I should 
be very well satisfied to stay with them all my 
life long." Without such affection, no great 
benefits need be looked for in any mission. 

At a later period, the number of Roman Catho- 
lic proprietors increased, and then the good work 
was greatly hindered. Such masters would allow 
no respite to their servants on Saturday evening, 
and even compelled them to work on the Lord's 
Day. Hurricanes, drought and pestilence brought 
suffering and death. Scarcely a year passed with- 
out carrying some of the hard-working band of 
Moravians to the grave. In the course of a few 
weeks, three brethren and three sisters were 
stricken fatally by a contagious fever (1817), but 
their ranks were kept filled. When this mor- 
tality was announced at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 
eight persons volunteered cheerfully the same day 
for St. Thomas. 

1 Bremer. See Period. Accounts, XXI, 42. 



LECT.m.] ST. CROIX. 89 

Sailing forty-five miles south from St. Thomas, 
we come to St. Croix or Santa Cruz, the most 
southern and largest of the Virgin Islands, having 
an area three times that of the island just left, 
and a population of twenty-three thousand. It is 
comparatively flat. It had been held successively 
by the English, Dutch, Spaniards and French; the 
latter selling it in 1734 to the West India and 
Guiana Company at Copenhagen. Count von 
Pless, First Chamberlain at the Danish Court, 
bought six plantations, and applied to the Breth- 
ren at Herrnhut for men who should act as over- 
seers of his property, and at the same time labor 
for the religious welfare of the negroes. Zinzen- 
dorf saw at once the objectionable features of that 
arrangement, but he was overruled. Eighteen 
colonists, fourteen men and four women, em- 
barked (1734). The Brethren were confined to 
a room below the second deck, only ten feet 
square, and so low that they could not even sit 
upright. Owing to stress of weather, the ship 
was obliged to winter in a port of Norwaj^ ; and 
more than half a year elapsed before they reached 
St. Thomas on their way to St. Croix. The te- 
dious voyage injured their health ; and, during 
the twelve weeks of their stay on St. Thomas, 
several of them died. St. Croix, having been 
deserted for nearly forty years before its transfer 
to Denmark, was overrun with underwood and 
trees; rank vegetation, rains and heat rendered 



90 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, hi. 

that island peculiarly unhealthy; so that, nine 
months after landing, only half of the original 
eighteen remained, and most of the survivors 
were prostrate with fever. The mixed object of 
the company- led naturally to divisions, and a 
portion of them lost their spirituality. Some 
good was effected, yet failure stamped the enter- 
prise. Before these unfortunate facts became 
known at Herrnhut, a reinforcement of eleven 
persons was sent out (1735), four of whom died 
within two months after their arrival, and the 
whole enterprise had to be abandoned. It was 
in view of so many untimely graves on this island, 
that Zinzendorf, mindful that the blood of mar- 
tyrs is the seed of the church, sang now of " the 
seed of the Ethiopian race." l But some of the 
converted negroes of St. Thomas, being sold to 
masters in St. Croix, spread the good news of 
salvation among their fellow-slaves, and were vis- 
ited by Moravians from the neighboring islands. 
The first regular mission, as such, did not com- 
mence till 1740; but the two Brethren, sent for 
that p.urpose, suffered shipwreck, one of whom, 
seeing his companion engulfed in the waves, could 
only say : " Depart in peace, beloved brother." 
Another relinquishment became necessary (1742), 



1 Es ivurden zehn dahin gesdt, 
Als war en sie verloren ; 
Aufihren Beeten aber steht — 
Das 1st die Saat der Mohren. 



lect. in.] CONVERTS. 91 

followed by another renewal (1743) ; and in 
1744 the first cases of baptism on St. Croix 
occurred. 

Calumny is something which ministers, mission- 
aries, and converts have met with in all ages. As 
in the first century, Nero tried to throw the blame 
of a nine days' conflagration on the hated Chris- 
tians, and, in the fourth century, Galerius charged 
incendiarism on them when a fire broke out in 
the imperial palace, so has it been in several 
rebellions at different times in the West Indies. 
It was thus on St. Croix during the insurrec- 
tion of the negroes, who had planned to massacre 
all the white inhabitants, Christmas night, 1759. 
Malicious persons charged some of the baptized 
slaves with being conspirators ; but their inno- 
cence was fully established. During the violent 
disturbance of 1878, resulting in the destruction 
of more than fifty estates — sugar-mills, offices, 
houses of proprietors and managers, with their 
furniture — only one or two baptized negroes 
were implicated. 

Prosperity finally crowned Christian effort on 
that island. Among the interesting converts was 
Cornelius, a master mason, a man of excellent 
capacity, who could speak Creole, Dutch, German 
and English. With great difficulty he purchased 
the freedom of himself and wife, and finally that 
of his six children. For seven-and-forty years 
he was an invaluable assistant in the mission; 



92 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect m. 

by his unwearied faithfulness night and day, among 
negroes on the scattered plantations, becoming 
spiritual father to large numbers of them. White 
men of rank and good education not unfrequently 
listened with pleasure and profit to his preaching. 
When past fourscore, he called his children and 
grandchildren around his bed, and said : " If you 
follow this advice of your father, my joy will be 
complete when I shall see you all again in bliss, 
and be able to say to our Saviour, ' Here, Lord, 
is thy unworthy Cornelius and the children whom 
thou hast given me.' I am sure our Saviour will 
not forsake you ; but, I beseech you, do not for- 
sake him." A colored helper, who suffered deep 
afflictions (1862), praj^ed thus: u Lord, chastise 
us, if needful, with one hand, but draw us nearer 
to thee with the other." In the course of fifteen 
years, fifty Moravian laborers found their graves 
on these two islands. 

Directly east from St. Thomas, at a distance of 
only six miles, lies the island of St. Jan, or St. 
John, a little smaller than St. Thomas, compara- 
tively healthy, and having only one town, Chris- 
tiansburg. The whole present population is 
about a thousand, chiefly free negroes. The 
mission there was begun at the solicitation of 
a gentleman who had been fellow-passenger 
with Zinzendorf, and who had charge of several 
estates. Brucker, a missionary, settled on St, 
John (1754), and success attended his labors, 



LECT. Ill ] 



ST. JOHN. 93 



though the congregations never became so large 
as on the other two islands. In proportion to 
the whole population, however, the number of 
converts has not perhaps been exceeded any- 
where else. 

We have now glanced at these three islands 
which constitute the only Danish possession in 
the West Indies — St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. 
John. Like the home dominion, they are small, 
yet have been among the best cultivated in the 
whole archipelago ; and the same is perhaps true 
as regards spiritual husbandry among the blacks. 
The happ}^ results of such missionary labor are 
unquestionable. One of the colored native assist- 
ants, Abraham, who rendered himself specially 
useful from 1740 onward for nearly a score of 
years, who often endured cruelties for his Chris- 
tian fidelity, and who was at last fatally stabbed 
by an exasperated negro, could write : " I thank 
the Lord that we now see what we never vent- 
ured to expect — that we are members of a living 
congregation of Jesus. Formerly, we w T ere little 
better than the beasts of the field, nor even pre- 
sumed to think that there was mercy in store for the 
heathen. We adore with all our hearts the Lord 
Jesus, and rest entirely on his love and grace." 
One aged woman, who had been sick, and was 
threatened with punishment by the overseer, say- 
ing, "It would be better with her then," replied : 
" Master, the earth on which I must stretch my- 



94 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. fLECT.m. 

self to receive blows is the Lord's, aiid, if you 
have me killed, my body will be all the sooner at 
rest ; and my soul, which you cannot slay, wdll 
go to the enjoyment of blessedness with my Lord 
Jesus." 

When Leonharcl Dober started for the Danish 
West Indies, he expressed a willingness to sacri- 
fice health, liberty and life, if only one soul might 
be saved. At the expiration of the first century, 
thirteen thousand three hundred and thirty-three 
persons had been admitted to the communion ; 
but since then there has been no great increase 
in the congregations, for by that time the blacks 
had all practically come under missionary instruc- 
tion, and of late the natural growth of the 
negro population has been trifling. On these 
three islands there are now eight stations, four- 
teen missionaries, six hundred and twenty-five 
communicants, while the whole number of persons 
in charge is four thousand three hundred and 
fourteen. It should be added that the price of 
the staple product, sugar, is at the present time 
very low; that the severe drought of several 
years past has destroyed the annual crops ; that 
many estates have been abandoned, and people 
have moved away. It is stated that the pro- 
prietors are now nearly all skeptics, and lead lives 
of extreme immorality; which of course has a 
damaging effect on the negroes, who, as a race, 
are sensuous, unreflecting, and with but little 



lect. in.] JAMAICA. 95 

self-control. Lying and stealing were habits com- 
mon among negroes on all the islands, and not 
easily eradicated — habits too common among the 
same race in our Southern States, and unfor- 
tunately not restricted to that color line. 

A sail of eight hundred miles in the Caribbean 
Sea westward from the Virgin Islands brings us 
to Jamaica, one of the Greater Antilles, the 
largest of the British West India Islands, yet 
only as large as Yorkshire, England ; an ellipse 
in shape ; mountainous, some peaks reaching the 
height of seven thousand feet. The general ap- 
pearance of the island is picturesque in a high 
degree, the escarpments of the rocks being often 
peculiarly irregular and rugged. Columbus, in 
describing the island, took a sheet of paper, and, 
crumpling it in his hand, laid it on the table as a 
model. Jamaica, especially in its eastern part, 
is better supplied with water than any other of 
the West India Islands ; it has more than a hun- 
dred short rivers, which must have suggested 
the original Indian name, Xaimaica, "Land of 
Springs." In area and present population, it is 
about the same as the State of Connecticut. 

For more than a century after Jamaica became 
an appendage of the British crown, almost noth- 
ing was done to Christianize the slaves ; r but, 
only twenty-two years after the first Moravian 

1 Philippo's Jamaica: its Past and Present State, 279. 



96 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

effort among the Danish Islands, a mission was 
begun here (1754). The beginnings, however, of 
the two, were quite unlike. A slave taken to the 
Danish capital was the occasion of the one ; two 
English Christian proprietors solicited the other. 
Early laborers on the Virgin Islands met with 
prevailing contempt, opposition and want; in 
Jamaica, they were respected, and supplied with 
much that was needful. In the former there was 
a large and early harvest ; in the latter, for more 
than half a century, fruits were limited and unsat- 
isfactory. The brothers, Messrs. William Foster 
and Joseph Foster-Barham, who had joined the 
Moravians in England, were strongly desirous 
of having religious instruction imparted to the 
negroes on their estates ; and, during the four 
years that followed the arrival of the first mission- 
aries (1754-58), the value of land presented by 
them, and of contributions in other forms, amount- 
ed to twelve thousand dollars. The interest 
shown by these brothers in the good work called 
forth the ridicule of relatives, and derision from 
other proprietors. The estate given by them for 
a Christian purpose led naturally to methods and 
relations incompatible with the best interests of 
Christian labor. As in the first colony on St. 
Croix, here, too, was a great mistake. There is 
such a thing as munificent gifts, even from truly 
religious sources, proving more detrimental, if 
possible, than parsimony would be in the same 



LECT. III.] 



MISTAKES. 97 



quarters. Large pecuniary patronage is a severe 
test even of the better type of spiritual efforts. 
The early missionaries to Jamaica, by accepting 
so much, came inevitably to be regarded as 
attaches of the plantation, as belonging to the 
staff of officers employed by the master. The 
overseer would complain to the preacher of lazi- 
ness among the slaves, and expect him to rebuke 
them. The missionaries became not unnaturally 
in a measure secularized ; and they failed to iden- 
tify themselves with the native population, a 
thing indispensable to success. Indeed, so far 
from thinking to sell themselves into bondage 
with a view to gaining access to the negroes, they 
fell into the mistake of owning slaves. This, 
however, came about in a comparatively innocent 
way, and not without a touch of pathos. The 
earliest instance occurred at St. Thomas (about 
1740), where one of the Brethren, stationed apart 
from others, was attacked by fever, and had 
nobody to attend him. Free servants were not 
to be had ; so the congregation, slaves themselves, 
collected money, bought a servant, and gave him 
to their minister to wait upon him in his forlorn 
condition. With the ideas of that age in regard to 
the system, and owning as they now did a Jamaica 
estate which had to be cultivated for their sup- 
port, it was less strange that the3^ thus became 
masters. Nor is it strange that their negroes 
were indisposed to attend upon their ministra- 

7 



98 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

tions, and that it was found necessary to require 
them to do this as to perform servile labor. The 
station founded on this estate was named Carmel, 
and it was held by the mission for seventy years, 
but never prospered. " O Jamaica, Jamaica ! " 
exclaims Missionary Lang; "dead as flint, yea, 
hard as an adamant, unfeeling to all that comes 
of God and from God! Dost thou think the 
Omnipresent will change his laws for thy corrupt 
customs' sake?" 

Improvement might, however, be seen, even in 
the comparatively lean and dreary period of the 
last century. Only the next year after (1755) 
the opening of the mission, a Brother wrote : " I 
heard that somebody had offered a horse to my 
servant Lewis, on the condition of his doing 
something which neither the black nor white 
people here think to be wrong, but which was 
against his conscience. He refused it, and an- 
swered : ' I will not lose my soul to gain a horse ! ' 
Another man, old John, would walk twenty miles 
to hear Christ preached, though scourged for the 
offense. His master, overtaking him one night, 
asks, with a curse, if he has been to church. ' I 
have,' he replies, ' and Jesus is sweet to me ; I 
must not let him go, massa ; I must go to church.' 
With another oath, and with further blows of the 
whip, the master rides on." Among the interest- 
ing converts of the present century was Archi- 
bald Monteith, brought from Africa as a slave, 



lect.iii.] SPIRITUAL FRUITS. 99 

who, without instruction, learned to read, and, as 
a helper, labored with ability, zeal and faithful- 
ness for many years, and whose last words (1863) 
were : " My looks are fastened on the cross. I 
am ready to depart, for I know whom I have 
believed." An aged woman, who walked eleven 
miles to attend meetings, when asked how she 
could do it, answered : " Love makes the way 
short." In the early clays of the work, Caries, 
the first missionary, sometimes had hearers who 
would walk fifteen or more miles to hear him 
preach. More recently (1821), at the chapels of 
Carmel and New Eden, might be seen negroes 
who did not hesitate to travel twenty miles after 
their week's labor, in order to reach the mission 
stations seasonably on Sunday morning. 

Prior to emancipation, the negro was so crushed 
as to be the veriest coward ; the whip and the 
gallows were constantly in his eye ; still there 
would be an occasional outbreak. In 1760 a 
rebellion occurred ; and in 1831 was an extensive 
insurrection, when, though few white men were 
killed, many buildings were burned. Almost 
none of the converts, however, shared in the 
uprising, while many instances came to light in 
which life and property were preserved by them. 
One proprietor, when obliged to leave home to 
join the militia, felt no hesitation in trusting his 
wife and children to the negroes; nor did they 
prove unworthy of such confidence. Through 



100 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

the hostility of persons whose evil deeds he had 
exposed, one of the missionaries, Pfeiffer, was 
arrested at that time and tried by a court-martial, 
but was unanimously acquitted ; whereas one of 
the chief witnesses against him was condemned 
and executed for the part he had taken in the 
insurrection. 

It was a great step when, in 1807, the slave- 
trade between Africa and the West Indies re- 
ceived its death-blow, but a much greater when 
the Act of Emancipation of slaves on the British 
West India Islands was passed, the Imperial Par- 
liament voting one hundred millions of dollars 
by way of compensation for eight hundred thou- 
sand slaves liberated. It must be accounted a 
noteworthy coincidence, that the same night — 
July 29, 1833 — in which the House of Commons 
passed the most important clause of that Act, and 
very nearly at the same moment, the spirit of 
Wilberforce, whose life-work was accomplished, 
should be released from earth. On the eve of 
the memorable 1st of August, 1838, when eman- 
cipation went fully into effect, negroes connected 
with the Moravian Brethren began to assemble 
at Fairfield, their chief station in Jamaica. At 
four o'clock, the chapel bell announced the day 
of jubilee ; and no sooner did day dawn than 
nearly two thousand — the whole number on the 
island was about three hundred and twelve thou- 
sand — who, till then, had been slaves, stood in 



lect.iii.] EMANCIPATION. 101 

orderly ranks on a terrace behind the chapel, 
clothed in white, prepared to give thanks to Al- 
mighty God. Religious services followed at dif- 
ferent hours ; there was deep feeling, but no 
jubilant demonstration. When the missionary, 
speaking from the words, " If the Son shall 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed," dwelt 
on the duty of gratitude for religious advantages, 
the whole multitude, with one consent, burst into 
a response : " Yes, massa ; thank God. We do 
thank the Lord for it. Bless the Lord ! " The 
emancipated slaves were by no means unforgiving. 
A gentleman, on making his first appearance at 
the house of God, was treated with marked civil- 
ity by a negro member of the church. "What 
makes you so happy in your attentions ? " asked 
the missionary, "Have I not been the slave of 
this man?" said he; "has he not punished me 
many times for going to church ? And now to see 
him come himself, and sit down under the same 
roof!" 

As time advances, spiritual Christianity takes 
a deeper hold on the general heart — a feature 
which may be looked for in the progress of all 
missionary work. That became especially evi- 
dent during a religious movement in the year 
1860, when a spirit of prayer and Christian ear- 
nestness, beginning at the station of New Carmel, 
spread to the other twelve stations, and was 
characterized by deep conviction of sin, and the 



102 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.iii. 

absence of all peace till found in the pardoning 
grace of Jesus Christ. " Oh, I never thought," 
exclaimed a girl twelve years of age, "that my 
sins placed the thorns on our Saviour's* head, and 
drove the nails into his hands, and fastened him to 
the cross ! I know it now ! But he has forgiven 
me." " O Lord Jesus," cries a lad, " come to me, 
a poor child ! Let the oil of thy grace overstream 
my heart, my head, my hands, my feet, for there 
is no sound spot in me ; all is full of wounds and 
putrefying sores ! " Bibles were bought as never 
before ; tippling-shops were deserted ; and a zeal 
for good works in general resulted, at least for a 
time. 

Here, as in other West India stations, there 
has been great mortality among the Brethren. 
While it is seldom that a negro dies of yellow 
fever, in one year (1825) four missionaries were 
removed in the course of a single month; and at 
another time (1843), also four during the year. 
Out of sixty-four who died before the first cente- 
nary, twenty-three served only two years or less. 
But, within the last quarter of a century, the 
average term of service has nearly doubled, and 
at the same time the work has come to be highly 
prosperous, and is now (1881) larger than any 
other in the wide field of Moravian labor; having 
fourteen stations, twenty-seven missionaries, in- 
cluding several blacks, and over fifteen thousand 
persons, of whom about five thousand are commu- 



LECT.iii.] st. Christopher's. 103 

nicants. In sixty-eight schools, there are more 
than five thousand children under instruction 
(5,555). In one year recently (1876), they 
raised for mission work, among themselves, eleven 
thousand and five hundred dollars, besides what 
they contributed to the Bible Society and other 
objects. A female training-school was opened in 
1861 at Bethabara, which has rendered good ser- 
vice. They have a theological seminary at Fair- 
field (1876), for training native ministers. As a 
general thing, however, the students have feeble 
reasoning powers, are superficial, and disposed to 
be content if only " dipped in a weak solution of 
accomplishment." Two years ago (1879), the 
death of the Principal, and other disappointing 
experiences, occasioned a temporary closing of 
the institution. Men dismissed from service in 
schools or elsewhere, for immorality, have, on 
account of their gifts, not unfrequently been 
taken up at once by other missions, and at a 
higher salary than the Moravians could afford to 
pay. Unhappily, this is not a solitary instance of 
such want of comity in the missionary world. 
Another annoyance, in later years (1876), is the 
damaging influence of Plymouth Brethren. 

Leaving Jamaica, we will now retrace our 
course through the Caribbean Sea to the east- 
ward, and beyond the Virgin Islands. Something 
over one hundred miles from St. Croix, we touch 
at St. Christopher's, familiarly known among the 



104 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

English as St. Kitt's. From the shore the land 
sweeps upward, slowly at first, then rapidly, to- 
ward the central mass, a rugged peak nearly four 
thousand feet high, of black lava, called Mount 
Misery, that overhangs an extinct volcano, from 
which at times clouds of smoke still issue. The 
island has less than seventy square miles, and a 
population of twenty-three thousand, two thirds 
of whom are negroes. St. Kitt's is picturesque 
and peculiarly fertile, the soil being in some 
places seventy feet deep. 

News of the great success of the gospel among 
slaves in Antigua, where a work had been begun 
by Moravians, reaching the island, Mr. Gardner, 
a Christian planter and an officer of the govern- 
ment, communicated a desire to the Directing 
Board at Herrnhut that a mission might be 
established. Two of the Brethren were accord- 
ingly sent out (1777). The venerable Bishop 
Spangenberg, in his instructions to them, made 
some excellent suggestions : " Be cautious and 
prudent in availing yourselves of the favor of 
men. When the late Count Zinzendorf was on 
a visit to St. Thomas, he found only one gentle- 
man kindly disposed toward our mission there, 
a Mr. Carstens. This gentleman ordered his 
slaves, of whom he possessed a great number, to 
attend the meetings of our Brethren. They did 
so, but still remained unconverted. On the other 
hand, the negroes, both men and women, who 



lbot.hi.] ST. CHKISTOPHER's. 105 

were beaten by their masters and mistresses for 
attendance at meetings, were converted and be- 
came the first-fruits of the negro congregation in 
St. Thomas." 

The Anglican clergyman formerly at St. Kitt's 
had not reflected much honor upon his calling. 
He boasted to the Moravians that, by request of 
a landed proprietor in England, he had baptized 
negroes, and in this way had earned not a little 
money. All these poor slaves continued un- 
taught pagans till the passing of the Curates' 
Bill, which entitled clergymen to a fee of 2s. 6d. 
for each baptism; and then twenty-four thousand 
in one parish of a certain island were made Chris- 
tians at once, without instruction, examination, or 
subsequent discipline, or any change in their habits, 
to live and die almost like those animals upon whom 
the holy water is sprinkled by the priests at Rome 
on the feast of St. Antonio ! ■ But the Moravian 
Brethren, by their deportment and disinterested 
labors, soon secured confidence and erelong suc- 
cess. Toward the close of the year, some of the 
negroes could be formed into a candidates* class. 
One old woman, to whom the missionaries were try- 
ing to make it clear that the Saviour of sinners had 
become man and died for her sake, and wished 
that she should be saved, fell upon her knees, 
lifted up her hands, and exclaimed : " O massa ! 

1 Baptist Noel's Christian Missions to Heathen Nations, 124. 



106 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

that is so sweet ! Such good news I never heard 
in all my life." Many of the negroes showed an 
eager desire to hear the Word of Life, which they 
might not learn to read. When, after a dozen 
years, a chapel was put up, the attendance be- 
came large, even on week-days. 

Seventeen years from the commencement 
(1794) there were two thousand members; and 
the good work continued to go on prosperously 
in the main. Less opposition was met with than 
at most of the islands; but it has been in the 
midst of fearful and destructive earthquakes, hur- 
ricanes, and floods, as well as alarms and occu- 
pation by the French during times of war, that 
the Moravians have toiled on. 1 Among the many 
rich natural productions of this island are several 
kinds of citron, which perfume the air, from one 
of which is obtained the delicious bergamot ; but 
no rich odor, no " spicy breezes," so refresh us as 
the breath of devout joy from converts, some 
of them on sick beds. " Praise the Lord ! " ex- 
claimed an elderly woman, as she fell under an 
apoplectic seizure. " Praise the Lord ! " were the 
last words of a youthful colored sister, whose 
sickness had been a prolonged one, and who had 
endured bufferings of Satan, whom she resisted, 

1 Pestilence has also done its fearful work. In the course 
of a little over one month in 1854, fourteen hundred and five, 
out of the eight thousand inhabitants of Basseterre, were swept 
away by cholera. 



lect.iii.] ANTIGUA. 107 

saying : " You did not die for me ! " Their cen- 
tenary celebration occurred in 1877 ; and there 
are now (1881) on the island four stations, ten 
missionaries, and four thousand persons in charge 
(4,106), of whom fifteen hundred and eighty-four 
are communicants. The schools are flourishing. 

A trip of sixty miles still farther eastward 
brings us to Antigua, an island discovered by 
Columbus (1493), nearly the first of those settled 
by England, and which is one of the most produc- 
tive in the British West-Indian group. It con- 
tains one hundred and eight square miles, and 
a population of perhaps thirty thousand. Anti- 
gua stands in extreme contrast with Jamaica, 
in that it has no running water, the people de- 
pending wholly upon cisterns, tanks and ponds. 
Hence, in the failure of rain, there is sometimes 
a distressing drought, and crops are uncertain. 
The condition of slaves in this island, previous to 
Moravian labors among them, did not differ much 
from what it was on other islands. The inherent 
vices of the system were here, as elsewhere, aggra- 
vated by certain accessories; Christian instruction, 
baptism and marriage had never been conceded to 
the negroes, and the only way in which they had 
learned the name of God was by hearing white 
men swear. 

A quarter of a century after the establishment 
of the mission on St. Thomas, Samuel Isles, after 
laboring on the Danish Islands for some time, 



108 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

went to Antigua (1756). He had received no 
instructions, and had no friends there ; but, going 
directly to the Governor, he showed the Act of 
Parliament (1749) which recognized the Mora- 
vian Church, and encouraged Christian efforts 
in British colonies. Permission to remain was 
granted. At night he found shelter in a negro 
cottage. He and his immediate successors suffered 
from extreme poverty, and were obliged to work 
for their own support. Peter Braun, who arrived 
from Pennsylvania (1769), and toiled assiduously 
for twenty-two years, was particularly blessed. 
His ardent love to the Saviour, and to the souls 
of these slaves, made him cheerfully condescend 
to men of low estate. He was with them in their 
hours of rest, ate out of their calabash, and 
thus finally conquered a place in their affection. 1 
" The poor negroes," he wrote, " have something 
very attractive to me. I love them dearly ; and 
they become dearer to me every day, especially 

1 To the Rev. Rowland Hill he wrote, in his imperfect 
English: "Certainly, dear sir and brother, when the grace of 
our dear Lord changed their heart, then they became comeliness 
unto our Lord Jesus Christ, as you write ; and when we see 
them, and feel how the grace of our Lord works in their heart, 
and in the meeting, we, faithfully speaking, see the tear trick- 
ling down their cheeks for longing to love our dear Saviour, 
who suffered and died for us ; when we see this and feel this 
from them, then we cannot do otherwise than love them, and 
spend these lives with therm" Rowland Hill's efforts in behalf 
of foreign missions may be traced to his special interest in the 
work of this humble Moravian. 



lect.iii.] THE GOSPEL EFFICIENT. 109 

when I observe their childlike simplicity and love 
to the Saviour." 

Was the new life among these debased crea- 
tures only apparent, or was it an abiding reality ? 
There have been seasons of remarkable religious 
interest, as in 1774, when the slaves, after work- 
ing hard all day, and often without a single meal, 
would, in spite of cruel beating, go eight and ten 
miles to hear the word of God ; and again, in 
1782, when missionaries could often find no time 
to eat a bit of bread, there were so many hungry 
souls to be fed. Wayside and stony ground 
hearers there were, of course ; but let specimens 
from the good ground speak for themselves. For 
instance, one Joseph, who joined the Moravians, 
having obtained his freedom, was engaged as 
valet to a gentleman. His master often entered 
into familiar conversation with him, and once 
said to him : " Joseph, you are a fool to be always 
going to Gracehill ; for you were baptized in the 
English Church." The negro replied : " I was 
a fool when I gave the clergyman money to bap- 
tize me, though he never instructed me in the 
doctrine of salvation. This I have been taught 
in Gracehill, a Moravian station. You, sir, are 
a great gentleman and a Christian, and yet you 
never go to church ; but I will tell you, I would 
not change with you, though I am but a poor 
negro." Jacob Harvey, a helper, was, like others, 
very fond of hymns. The missionary, finding the 



110 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

good man's book crammed with slips of paper, 
blades of grass, dried leaves, cane-tops, and bits 
of rags, as book-marks, remonstrated with him, 
saying that the back of the book would burst; 
but Jacob exclaimed : " O massa ! dem me partik- 
ler hymns." The converts learned to take joy- 
fully the spoiling of their goods, such as they had. 
The house of one of them being broken into and 
robbed, he said, with placid countenance : " Well, 
they have not been able to rob me of my greatest 
treasure — the grace of my Saviour. They are 
more to be pitied than I am." 

When Peter Braun arrived, there were fourteen 
baptized negroes ; when, literally worn out in the 
Master's service, he left (1791), there were, in 
charge of the Brethren, seven thousand and four 
hundred persons, of all ages, the majority of whom 
had received baptism, 1 and a great number were 
communicants. In the course of the last year of 
this most excellent man's labor there, no fewer than 
six hundred and forty baptisms took place. Even 
sixty years ago (1823) it was found that, in the 
town of St. John's alone, more than sixteen thou- 
sand (16,099) negroes had received that ordi- 
nance ; and the church there attained such size 
— about seven thousand members — that, in the 

1 In these missions, children are not baptized as such after 
they have completed their fourth year, nor in general as adults 
before they are twelve years old. Missionary Conference, St. 
Thomas, 1869, p. 9. 



LECT.m.] THE GOSPEL EFFICIENT. Ill 

course of less than ten years (1837-1845), it 
could furnish four branch congregations. In St. 
John's is a training institution for females, which 
supplies useful school-mistresses. 

The memorable year of 1834 arriving, the Leg- 
islature of the Colony of Antigua took a bold 
step in granting unrestricted freedom to the 
slaves, instead of waiting till after the four years 
of apprenticeship allowed by Parliament. The 
result showed that the proceeding was no less 
judicious than humane. In the preamble to that 
Act, the fitness of Antigua bondsmen for this 
immediate boon was ascribed to the religious 
instruction which for a long time had been im- 
parted by Moravians and others. On the evening 
of July 31, one of the Brethren held a meeting, 
which was thronged, the text of his discourse 
being, " Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the 
Lord will do wonders for you." About eleven 
o'clock it began to thunder, which continued 
with increasing violence till midnight, and then 
ceased. It seemed as if God from heaven sum- 
moned all to attend while liberty to the captive 
was proclaimed. The clock struck twelve, and 
thirty thousand souls on that island passed in an 
instant from slavery to freedom. The sun of 
August 1st rose upon them an orderly commu- 
nity, subdued in temper, and hastening quietly 
" to enter the gates of the Lord with thanksgiving 
and his courts with praise." 



112 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. in. 

At the present hour (1881) there are eight 
stations, seventeen missionaries, and seven thou- 
sand members (7,106). It was peculiarly grati- 
fying to me to hear Bishop Jackson, of the 
English Church, after forty years of missionary 
service in the West Indies, make a public state- 
ment in Exeter Hall, five j^ears ago, to this effect 
— that he remembered when the census of An- 
tigua made no mention of the thousands of 
blacks; when scarcely one of them was seen in 
the English churches, or at the communion 
table ; when very few of them could read ; and 
when there was no marriage, for that would 
interfere with the planters' way of doing busi- 
ness. Now, more than half can read, and a 
majority are in the congregations ; and, in achiev- 
ing that result, Moravians nobly took the lead. 
He stated also that the first English clergyman 
who instructed blacks in Barbados was indicted 
for the offence, and that the prosecuting attorney 
is still living. 

We now change our course, and proceed south- 
ward toward the equator. Three hundred miles 
will bring us to the island just named, Barba- 
dos, 1 the most eastern or windward island in the 



1 Barbados, i.e., barbatus, bearded. It was named thus by its 
Portuguese discoverers, from the appearance of a tree, a species 
of the ficusy which throws out long pendant tufts from its 
branches. 



lect.iii.] BARBADOS. 113 

archipelago ; encircled with coral reefs ; not ele- 
vated itself; less unhealthy than other islands; 
a larger share of its one hundred and sixty-six 
square miles under cultivation than is to be found 
elsewhere ; more densely populated than China, 
indeed, than any other spot in the world, except 
Malta — nine hundred and sixty-six to the square 
mile — notwithstanding the Asiatic cholera, in 
1854, carried off over one seventh of the people. 
A larger proportion of the inhabitants (160,000) 
are white than anywhere else in the West Indies. 
Small as is the area — about the same as the Isle 
of Wight — its annual trade amounts to more 
than five millions of dollars each of exports and 
imports. 

The earlier missionary endeavors of Moravians 
on Barbados were attended with special discour- 
agements. Planters blamed the captain who had 
brought a Moravian preacher ; and one, who was 
a Roman Catholic, declared he would throw him 
into the water if he came near his estate. Of the 
two Brethren sent out in 1765, one died within 
three weeks after landing; and death continued 
to keep the ranks of these Christian laborers thin, 
so that, after six years, there remained only two 
widows and one unmarried man. But the living 
did not lose heart, nor did the dying leave regret- 
fully. Missionary Herr, for example, on the even- 
ing of his decease (February 24, 1773), said : 
" Yes, dear Saviour, come soon and call me, and 

8 



114 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clbct. hi. 

give me what thou hast merited ; more I desire 
not." 

Among the Moravians who labored for a 
time on this island, was the father of James 
Montgomery the poet, the Rev. John Mont- 
gomery, who died here in 1791. Here too, as 
elsewhere, it appeared that, in the servile in- 
surrection of 1816, not one connected with 
the mission congregation was implicated in an 
outbreak which cost the lives of a thousand ne- 
groes. By the terrible hurricanes of 1780 and 
1831, which for a time made a desert of Bar- 
bados, the mission suffered heavily. The de- 
struction of property throughout the island, in 
those two visitations, amounted to fifteen mill- 
ions of dollars ; and of life, to about six thousand 
persons. 

This mission has not been characterized by 
eminent success, either in numerical results, or 
influence on the dense population ; yet a goodly 
number of negroes have given evidence, in life and 
in death, that they were subjects of special divine 
grace. A representative of such was Dinah, one 
of the first to receive baptism, who showed by her 
whole deportment that she was a child of God; 
and who, more than a hundred years of age, was 
found dead one morning, kneeling by her bedside 
in the attitude of prayer. At the present time 
(1881), there are on the island four stations, 
six missionaries, and three thousand adherents 



lect. in.] TOBAGO. 115 

(3,167), the fourteen hundred (1,406) communi- 
cants included. 

It was hardly to be supposed that fiction and 
the plain prose of our present subject would meet 
on the confines of the Caribbean Sea ; yet Tobago 
is entitled to be regarded as " Robinson Crusoe's 
Island," Charles Kingsley, whose authority in a 
matter of romance will not be questioned, pro- 
nouncing in its favor. It certainly is so situated 
as not improbably to be the place of wreck for 
one off "the river Qroonoque," who should, as 
Crusoe did, "stand away for Barbados." From 
the latter it is distant one hundred and fifty miles 
to the south. 

Here we begin to find ourselves outside the 
range of hurricanes, and among the spices — cin- 
namon and nutmegs. Figs and guavas are the best 
in the West Indies. Unlike the islands hitherto 
visited, this has singing-birds. Of humming-birds 
there are several species; and here we set eyes 
upon the beautiful flamingo. The island has an 
area of about one hundred square miles, and a 
population of seventeen thousand souls. Here, 
as well as in Barbados, an incurable form of lep- 
rosy is known ; the lower limbs being not unfre- 
quently attacked, and becoming so swollen and 
rough as to resemble the limbs of an elephant; 
hence the name, Elephantiasis. x 

1 Elephantiasis Arabum — Bucnomia tropica, or " Barbados leg." 



116 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

In bringing the gospel hither, as so often else- 
where, Moravian missionaries were pioneers. At 
the request of a Mr. Hamilton, one of the wealthy 
proprietors, a beginning was made by the Rev. 
John Montgomery (1787), who, in feeble health, 
paid a visit from Barbados. Three years later 
he moved to the island ; but his wife died after 
a few months, and, within less than a year, he 
was obliged to leave, when there occurred a 
missionary interregnum of eight years. Mr. Ham- 
ilton, however, was still desirous to have the 
slaves taught religiously, though most of the 
planters spent their unrighteous gains in profli- 
gacy, and were not in favor of having the Word 
of God, which condemned their sinful practices, 
introduced among the slaves. A prosperous work 
began ; then failure of health again on the part 
of new laborers, 1 and the reoccupation of the 
island by the French, compelled another suspen- 
sion of the work (1802). A quarter of a cent- 
ury more elapsed before permanent resumption 
took place (1827), when the chief missionary sta- 
tion received the appropriate name of Montgom- 
ery, which it still bears. 

Unquestionable improvement, in nearly all re- 
spects, has taken place among the negroes. The 



1 The average term of service on the part of the sixty -four 
brethren and sisters who have labored here is only four 
years. 



lect. in.] CONVERTS. 117 

uncouth patois which formerly prevailed has given 
place somewhat generally to respectable English; 
and Tobago enjoys the enviable reputation of 
having a larger proportion of her inhabitants in 
the enjoyment of educational advantages than 
any other island in the archipelago. Some of the 
negroes have become exemplary Christians and 
valuable helpers, by witnessing to the truth ex- 
perimentally as it is in Jesus. Such an one, for 
instance, was old Kate, at Montgomery; and 
Belinda, once a slave, but a true mother in Israel 
— names which Paul would have inserted among 
the Phebes and Priscillas of Romans sixteenth. 
" When I am going up hill to Montgomery," 
Belinda used to say, " I am as joyful as if I were 
going to heaven." Instances of suggestive liber- 
ality were not wanting. When the foundation 
of a new church was laid (1840) at Montgomery, 
an old man came on his crutches to the mission- 
ary, and laid clown a dollar, saying : " Massa, 
here is something for the new church." " Where 
did you get the money ? " asked the missionary. 
"I take care of little children," said he, " while 
their mothers are at work in the fields ; and some- 
times they give me a half-penny or two for my 
trouble ; so, by degrees, I have collected this 
dollar, and now I give it to the church with all 
my heart." It was all he had. The statistics 
for 1881 report three stations, six missionaries, 
over a thousand church-members (1,106), and 



118 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

two thousand six hundred and seventeen persons 
in charge. 

This West India mission, in its two divisions, 
Eastern and Western — an arrangement which was 
made in 1879 — reckons forty-one stations, seventy- 
eight missionaries, and over thirty-six thousand 
members (36,698). By an enactment of the last 
General Synod of the Unitas (1879), the appro- 
priations are to be reduced one tenth annually; 
and this field is to become self-supporting in the 
year 1889, after which it will receive no more aid 
from the home churches, and will then constitute 
an independent Province, though, like each of the 
existing Provinces, an integral part of the Unitas 
Fratrum. It should be added that, from the first, 
it has been found necessary to exclude many 
from the churshes on account of immorality. 
Outside of Christian churches, the majority of 
children born are illegitimate. The moral atmos- 
phere is a tainted one. Relics of African super- 
stition are to be met with. One, among the many 
notions which the black sorcerers encourage, is 
this — that they can furnish something where- 
with to catch the shadow of a man, who can then, 
they pretend, be burned or drowned. The former 
curse of slavery is still felt in its degrading influ- 
ence on the negro ; manly independence, and sta- 
bility of Christian character, such as may be met 
with on the west coast of Africa, are seldom found 
here. 



lect. in.] SLAVERY. 119 

In the flow of human affairs under Divine provi- 
dence, what a singular conjunction do we witness 
on these West India Islands ! Savage men, torn 
from the western coast of the old Dark Continent, 
are forced into cruel bondage, thousands of miles 
away, on the confines of this new world. Moved 
by the Spirit, and guided by the God of missions, 
men from the interior of another continent find 
their way thousands of miles to the same region, 
that they may sit down by these expatriated 
Africans, and tell them of salvation through Jesus 
Christ. Be it remembered, Catholic Spain was 
not the only country which had been, and was 
still, engaged in the slave trade, and in the em- 
ployment of slave labor on West India Islands. 
Protestant England legalized and encouraged the 
abomination. Only twenty years before Dober 
and Nitschmann sailed- for St. Thomas, Queen 
Anne boasted, in her speech to Parliament (1712), 
of her success in securing to Englishmen a new 
market for slaves in Spanish America. One hun- 
dred thousand negroes were annually imported 
to supply West India plantations alone ; and, on 
passing into the planters' hands, each of them had 
the initial of his owner's name stamped upon his 
shoulder with a heated brand. And what kind of 
treatment did they experience ? On the estates 
generally, at dawn of day the shell was blown 
to call slaves to their work; and each gang — one 
of them made up of children from six to twelve 



120 MOEAYIAK MISSIONS. Clecthi. 

years of age — was marched to the field under 
a driver with a long whip. Returning exhausted 
after sunset, they were sometimes compelled to 
toil for hours by moonlight. If the overseer, 
upon examination, was not satisfied with their 
work, they were flogged, men and women alike. 
Yes, women might be whipped at the mercy of 
any ruffian slave-driver ; and by at least the 
third blow the body would be covered with blood. 
Mr. Henry Whitley x gives a simple and truthful 
narrative of the common incidents of a sugar plan- 
tation, and brings before us the driver, looking on 
with lazy indifference; the piercing cries of the 
negro woman tied upon the ground to receive her 
punishment; the crack of the fearful cart-whip, 
the shriek of agony as it cuts deep into the flesh. 
In four colonies, and those the best ordered, 
planters themselves swore to the infliction of 
sixty thousand punishments in one year. A sin- 
gle individual, Mr. Arthur Hodge, caused the 
death of about threescore slaves ; and his counsel 
asserted boldly that, " a slave being prope^, it 
was no greater offence in law for a master to kill 
him than it would be to kill a dog." 2 To have 
a conscience or aspiration or human affection, to 
think or hope, was no prerogative of the negro, 
but only to dig and to tremble. What must be 

1 Three Months in Jamaica. 1832. 

2 Edwards's History of the British West Indies, IV, 460. 



lect.iii.] MORAVIAN PHILANTHROPY. 121 

the moral condition of savages kidnapped and 
subjected to such a system — a system under 
which marriage was illegal, under which, on some 
estates, they were rigidly forbidden to attend 
upon any means of grace, every violation being 
visited with the lash ? The plantation staff were 
sunk in profligacy; the negroes were like beasts 
of the field. " Take it all in all," says Captain 
Southey, brother of Robert Southey the poet, 
and a competent witness, " it is perhaps as dis- 
graceful a portion of history as the whole course 
of time can afford ; for I know not that there is 
anything generous, anything ennobling, anything 
honorable or consolatory to human nature, to 
relieve it, except what may relate to the mission- 
aries." 

The thought of giving Christian instruction 
to slaves seems to have occurred to only here and 
there a planter. With whom did an effort in that 
direction originate ? With George II, a German 
prince, then upon the throne of England ? With 
the Parliament of England, or the Church of Eng- 
land? No, but among obscure Moravians in the 
heart of continental Europe. Before Grenville 
Sharpe was born, half a century before Thomas 
Clarkson and William Wilberforce began to in- 
terest themselves about the slave trade, humble 
artisans from Herrnhut were illustrating " practi- 
cal Christianity " among despised African bond- 
servants of English proprietors in this far-off 



122 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iii. 

region. They led the van in breaking up the 
apathy that prevailed concerning the spiritual 
condition of slaves, and in breaking through the 
skepticism which prevailed as to the possibility 
of their being converted. Not long before the 
mission was begun on St. Christopher's, an Eng- 
lish clergyman declared : " To bring them to the 
knowledge of the Christian religion is undoubt- 
edly a great and good design, in the intention 
laudable, and in speculation easy ; yet I believe, 
for reasons too tedious to mention, that the diffi- 
culties attending it are, and I am persuaded ever 
will be, insurmountable." 1 Moravian mission- 
aries had to encounter the most intensely adverse 
agencies — drought, famine, pestilence and the 
hurricane, which at times demolished dwellings 
and churches, and carried devastation over all 
the fruits of industry. Mortality among the 
missionaries has been fearful. Many have died 
when just entering upon the work, and nearly all 
have suffered from severe sickness. At the close 
of the first century (1832), out of three hundred 
and seven laborers, male and female, who had 
been employed, one hundred and ninety (an aver- 
age of about two annually) had been removed by 
death. These West India Islands form a series 
of Moravian cemeteries. The Brethren knew 



1 The Rev. Mr. Hughes, quoted in Jamaica Enslaved and 
Free, 140. 



lect.iii.] MORAVIAN PHILANTHROPY. 123 

their liabilities ; they met them calmly, and with 
quiet assurance fell asleep in Jesus. Other 
churches have since sent Christian laborers to 
the same fields ; but Moravians were the first, 
by their toil and their graves, to take possession 
of those islands for " Him who shall have domin- 
ion also from sea to sea." 



LECTURE IV. 

MISSIONS TO SOUTH AND CENTRAL 
AMERICA. 



MISSIONS TO SOUTH AND CENTRAL 
AMERICA. 



A Scottish writer, 1 speaking of the savage, 
remarks : " Europe, especially Britain, would fain 
save him, but he cannot be saved. Born a sav- 
age, meant for savage life, it would seem as if his 
Creator had decreed that his continuance should 
be limited to this state ; and that the approach of 
civilization, and the races who pertain to it, speak 
the doom of savagism and the savage." So writes 
the minister of St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, 
in Bathurst, New South Wales. This voice from 
the antipodes does not sound quite Pauline : " I 
am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barba- 
rians." Might not a remembrance of his own 
ancestors, who at a remote period were wild sav- 
ages, have corrected the reverend gentleman's 
notion regarding divine decrees? Whatever the 
residence, the experience, or the profession, is it 
seemly in any one to limit our Saviour's last com- 
mand, or the elevating power of Christianity? 

1 Christian Missions to Wrong Places, among Wrong Races, 
and in Wrong Hands. By Rev. A. C. Geekie, D.D. London, 
1871, p. 101. 

(127) 



128 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iy. 

What body of clergymen now living, what culti- 
vated religious community is there, but may trace 
their pedigree back to a barbarian period ? 

In the last lecture, it appeared that humble, 
earnest men proved the gospel of Christ to be 
" the power of God unto salvation to every " 
uncivilized African in the West Indies "that 
believeth." Let us today look a little further 
among savages in the tropics. Taking our de- 
parture from the island of Tobago, we sail for 
South America. Two hundred miles bring us 
past the mouth of the Orinoco to the nearest point 
of Guiana on the shoulder of the continent. The 
region bearing this name, Guiana, extends from 
the Orinoco to the Amazon ; but, in the more 
restricted use, it has a northern coast-line of six 
or eight hundred miles, divided into three por- 
tions, English, Dutch, and French Guiana. No 
mountain range or headland along the coast 
attracts the eye of the mariner. The land is so 
low as to be hardly visible from the sea ; indeed, 
trees seem to rise out of the water. Scarcely a 
stone can be found. For many leagues south- 
ward it is one great oozy, alluvial flat, a tropical 
Netherlands, requiring embankments to protect 
against inundations from the ocean and from 
rivers. There are districts where, in flood-time, 
fishes feed on the leaves of herbs, crabs are found 
on trees, and oysters multiply in the forests. The 
sea is made turbid by alluvial matter which the 



LECT. IV.] 



GUIANA. 129 



streams discharge ; and the same matter, lodged 
on land, gives rise, under tropical heat, to malaria. 
The enormous amount of quinine imported sug- 
gests the kinds of fevers which prevail. Forests 
and rivers are the chief features. Here is found 
the magnificent Victoria Regia, discovered bj r 
Shomburgk in 1837, the most beautiful specimen 
in the vegetable kingdom of this western hemi- 
sphere. Parasitical plants are so abundant and 
rank as to render these virgin forests nearly im- 
passable by man ; but they are alive with wild 
beasts, and with a variety of brilliant birds. Here 
is the favorite home of the boa, the vampire, 
frightful swarms of insects and of various vermin. 
It is the very paradise of the chigoe, the wood- 
tick, and the bete-rouge. It may be noticed, in 
passing, that in all the larger rivers there are 
cataracts at some distance from the sea; one of 
these falls, the Kaieteur, becoming known to the 
civilized world only a dozen years since. 1 The 
Potaro, a tributary of the Essequibo, at a width 
of three hundred and seventy feet, plunges from 
a height of eight hundred and twenty-two feet. 2 
It was hither that gallant Sir Walter Raleigh 



1 Discovered by C. B. Brown in 1870. 

2 " Many years since," says Raleigh, " I had knowledge by 
revelation of that mighty, rich, and beawtifull empire, Guiana, 
and of that great and golden citie which the Spaniards call 
El Dorado, and the naturals Manoa." Discoverie of the Empire 
of Guiana, 1595, p. v. 

9 



130 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

came in pursuit of an imaginary "El Dorado," 
glittering pieces of mica being sufficient to induce 
the dream of another empire like that of the 
Incas. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and 
English adventurers were attracted to this region, 
and many lives sacrificed. 

The eastern section of Guiana is the only Brit- 
ish possession on the continent of South America ; 
but the population, about a hundred and fifty 
thousand, exclusive of aborigines, is most miscel- 
laneous — British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, 
African, besides Chinese and Hindu coolies. In 
the interior are Indian tribes, like the aborigines 
of our own country — feeble remnants, scattered, 
diminishing in numbers, and politically unimpor- 
tant. In character apathetic, indolent, sensuous, 
revengeful, fond of an independent life, they have 
acute senses, and maintain a keen observation of 
natural objects. Blood-revenge is not uncommon. 
Slavery existed among the natives, as in Africa, 
from the earliest times. 1 Among these tribes are 
the Accawois, who deal in poison and murder, 
hiring themselves to others for the purpose of 
assassination ; the Warows, marsh-loving, filthy, 



1 Francis Sparrow, who had been left by Sir Walter Raleigh 
to explore the country, bought, to the southward of the Ori- 
noco, eight beautiful young women, the eldest not eighteen 
years of age, for a red-handled knife, the value of which in 
England, at that time, was but one half -penny. Drake's Voy- 
age, 295. 



lect.it.] INHABITANTS. 131 

and most degraded; the Arawaks, 1 less savage, 
more accessible and more numerous, than others, 
living nearer the European colonists, and having 
an aptitude for civilization greater than tribes 
farther from the coast. Then there are the 
Caribs, martial plunderers, if not as in former 
times cannibals, who tyrannize over less spirited 
natives, and in their general habits resembling 
the Indians of North America, subsisting chiefly 
by the chase and by fishing. They are found on 
both sides of the Essequibo, and in Upper Deme- 
rara, British Guiana. Their religion is a dark 
web of gross superstition and incoherent fetichism. 
They believe in two superior beings ; to the one 
who is beneficent they pay no acts of worship, 
but endeavor by tricks of necromancy to neutral- 
ize the influence of the evil spirit or spirits, of 
whom they live in abject fear. " They seek unto 
them that have familiar spirits, and wizards that 
peep and mutter." This, however, must be said 
to the credit of native Indians, that swearing is 
unknown in the vernacular, which does not fur- 
nish requisite terms, though drunken Indians will 
sometimes practice profaneness at a fearful rate, 
but it is in the English language. 

Sundry good things have come from the Old 

1 Variously given : Arowaks, Arowacks, Arrowacks, Arro- 
waks, Arowagrees, etc. — "Flour-People," from their having 
invented the art of preparing tapioca. Peschel, Volkerkunde, 
s. 451. 



132 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv 

World to this Western World by way of Holland. 
One of them is the coffee-plant, which, though 
now so widely spread, is the product of a single 
specimen transplanted to the Botanic Garden at 
Amsterdam by Van Hoorn, Governor of Batavia, 
in 1718; plants being sent afterwards to Surinam, 
Dutch Guiana, whence they spread over the 
tropical parts of America. But the best thing 
ever introduced by way of the Netherlands was 
Moravian Christianity. Spangenberg, a most 
able Bishop of the United Brethren, on his jour- 
ney to England in 1734, passed through Holland, 
and, at the suggestion of Zinzendorf, had several 
consultations with the Directors of the Dutch 
Trading Company for Surinam. As a result, the 
United Brethren agreed to form one or more 
colonies in that country, with a view to evangel- 
izing the native tribes. The next year, three of 
the Brethren went out to explore the country; 
and, a gentleman in Amsterdam having requested 
that Moravians would settle upon the Rio de 
Berbice, and preach to his negro slaves — that 
territory then belonging to Holland — ■ Diihne and 
Giittner, from Marienborn, accepted the under- 
taking. Those in charge of the estates, however, 
looked askant upon these humble men, and deter- 
mined to thwart their purpose — one of the hun- 
dreds of cases in which the greatest impediment 
to foreign missions has come from persons bear- 
ing the Christian name. So rigorous was the 



LECT. IV.] 



EST BEKBICE. 133 



treatment of the slaves as to eut off all access 
to them. To the west of the Rio de Berbice, on 
one of its tributaries, the Wironje, at a distance 
of a hundred miles from the seacoast, the Breth- 
ren secured (1738) a little resting-place, which 
they called Pilgerhut, and there won the confi- 
dence of neighboring Arawak Indians, some of 
whom had a partial understanding of the Dutch 
language. This imperfect opportunity for com- 
municating the truths of Christianity was im- 
proved by the Moravians, so far as the necessities 
of labor for their own subsistence would allow. 
Other helpers joined them (1739-1711). Having 
acquired some knowledge of the Arawak lan- 
guage — the softest of all Indian tongues, with 
a great variety of moods and tenses, and capable 
of great nicety of expression — they began to 
seek out more distant savages in the wilderness, 
carrying provisions with them, traversing broad 
streams, and sleeping in the forest. For trans- 
lating the story of Christ's love and suffering into 
the vernacular, as well as in preaching, they had 
the assistance of a mulatto, whom a gentleman 
gave to them, and who afterwards became a 
preacher. At length a serious impression was 
made upon the Indians, though for the first eight 
years it seemed to be hoping against hope. 
Within less than ten years (1748), forty-five per- 
sons were received into the church, and many of 
these converts put up their huts at Pilgerhut. 



134 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.it. 

Related Indians on the Orinoco and on the Cor- 
entyn, hearing through converts the good news 
of salvation, visited the Christian settlement 
(1750), and learned the gospel message more 
fully, which resulted in several companies of 
heathen coming to live at Pilgerhut. 

But the great Adversary of missions seemed 
bent on injuring, indeed on ruining, the settle- 
ment. An order came from the colonial govern- 
ment forbidding these accessions, and requiring 
the missionaries to clothe the converts, and to 
pay a tax for each of them ! Two of the Chris- 
tian Indians were impressed into military service, 
which struck terror into their companions, who 
fled to the woods. Some of the Moravians felt 
constrained to return to Europe ; others remained 
and toiled on, notwithstanding manifold obsta- 
cles, and they were cheered by finding that the 
gospel exerted its transforming power even upon 
cannibal tribes — tribes far more barbarous than 
the Arawaks. 

By the year 1756, Pilgerhut had grown to be 
a Christian colony of two hundred and thirty- 
three souls, not including unbaptized children ; 
and three hundred believers had been won. 
Among them there were clear cases of genuine 
conversion. Take a specimen. One of the na- 
tives, desiring to write to the Moravians in 
Europe, dictated a letter as follows : " Having 
arrived at manhood, I spent many years without 



lbct. iv.] OPPOSITION. 135 

any knowledge of my Saviour. When I after- 
wards became desirous to experience what I had 
heard, it was granted me. Jesus has cleansed 
me in his blood, and delivered me from my dis- 
obedience. This truth, that he died and shed his 
blood for me, hath conquered and captivated my 
heart. This I can never forget ; and therefore 
will I love him with all my soul, and daily give 
my heart to him." x The superintendent of the 
mission, Mr. Schumann, called the "Apostle of 
the Arawaks," as John Eliot had been called the 
"Apostle of the Indians" in Massachusetts — a 
man who, four months after his arrival, began to 
preach in the vernacular — was obliged to visit 
Europe (1758). No ordained laborer then re- 
mained; a destructive sickness raged; famine 
followed, and, finally, an insurrection of negroes 
(1763), who laid waste the surrounding country, 
and brought the mission to a close. The Breth- 
ren's property, to a considerable amount, together 
with an Arawak grammar and dictionary, was 
destroyed. 

Not long after the station just named was estab- 
lished at Pilgerhut in Berbice, the Moravians of 
Herrnhut sent out the nucleus of a settlement 
to Surinam, Dutch Guiana (1739). This was 
under an agreement with the Surinam Company ; 
and Paramaribo, the capital, and indeed the only 

1 Holmes's Missions of the United Brethren, 245-6. 



136 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.iv. 

town, was their destination. But, as their neigh- 
bors, whether Jews or nominal Christians, were 
forbidden by Government to attend domestic wor- 
ship with them, and as manual labor for their 
own support left no opportunity for visiting the 
Indians, they removed to the banks of the Cot- 
tika, a tributary of the Corentyn, which joins 
the river Surinam just at its entrance into the 
sea. There were Arawaks in the neighborhood, 
but the Brethren had only a slight acquaintance 
with the language ; they became divided among 
themselves, and that place too was abandoned 
(1745). 

Nearly a decade after their advent in Guiana, 
another Moravian settlement was begun (1747), 
two tracts of land being procured — one on the 
river Corentyn, at the extreme west of Dutch 
Guiana, receiving the name of Ephraim ; the other 
on the waters of the Saramacca, called Sharon, 
a little west of the Surinam River. Conversions 
among the native tribes took place, and there was 
much to encourage the hope of great success; 
but the Bush Negroes, runaway slaves, brought 
ruin to this settlement also. Its existence was 
an object of strong dislike to these self-emanci- 
pated Africans, because the Caribs, who now 
built villages on the Saramacca, laid in wait for 
the fugitives, being allowed fifty florins by the 
Dutch Government for every one whom they 
seized. The Bush Negroes made an assault on 



lect.iv.J ON THE COEENTYN. 137 

Sharon, killed some, seized a number of prisoners, 
and set fire to the premises. With a company of 
Indians, the two missionaries left after a while. 
They were, however, reinforced by three more 
from Europe ; but, a few days after their arrival, 
two of them died, and, in less than a year, two 
more of the party. Notwithstanding a measure 
of spiritual prosperity later, it became necessary 
to abandon the place (1779). 

In 1757, Missionary Dahne took up his abode 
on the Corentyn in the midst of an utter wilder- 
ness. His life was repeatedly threatened by rov- 
ing Indians ; he soon fell sick. We will listen to 
his own account of yet other perils : " One even- 
ing, being unwell and going to lie down in my 
hammock, upon entering the door of my hut, I 
perceived a large serpent descending upon me 
from a shelf near the roof. In the scuffle, the 
creature stung or bit me two or three times in 
the head, and, pursuing me very closely, twined 
itself several times round my head and neck. 
Supposing that this would be the occasion of 
my departing this life, I, for the satisfaction of my 
brethren, wrote the cause of my death in a few 
words with chalk upon the table, ' A serpent 
has killed me,' lest they should charge the In- 
dians with the deed. But on a sudden that prom- 
ise of our Saviour to his disciples was impressed 
upon my mind, ' They shall take up serpents, 
and it shall not harm them ' (Mark xvi : 18), and, 



138 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

seizing the creature with great force, I tore it 
loose and flung it out of the hut. I then laid 
down to rest in the peace of God." With no 
earthly companion, the dear man, in spite of pri- 
vations, was still contented and happy. What a 
record does he make ! " Our Saviour was always 
with me, and comforted me with his gracious 
presence, so that I can truly say I spent my time 
in happiness and peace." After two years of 
solicitude and peril, Dahne was relieved by three 
missionaries, who built a little church and dwell- 
ing-house and laid out a plantation, to which they 
gave the renewed name of Ephraim. Besides 
the Arawaks, many Caribs and Warows visited 
the place, and, when listening to the story of the 
cross, sometimes showed by their tears that their 
hearts were touched. The rebellion of negro 
slaves (1763) broke up this station as well ; but, 
two years later, the Brethren selected a place 
twelve miles farther up the river, which they 
named Hoop. Thither baptized natives and 
others began to resort, so that by 1783 the 
Christian Indians belonging' to the settlement 
numbered one hundred and sixty-seven. 

Among the worthy men who at different times 
joined the mission, was John Jacob Gottlob 
Fischer (1789), a man of rare energy and apti- 
tude for the place. Only a few months were 
needed by him for mastering the Arawak lan- 
guage sufficiently to preach in it. He had yet 



lect.iv.] BUSH NEGROES. 139 

earlier opened a school for children. Epidemic 
diseases, however, hostile negroes, incendiary fires, 
scarcity, and the war between Holland and Eng- 
land, finally broke up the station at Hoop (1808). 
It was afterwards reoccupied (1812-1816), and 
then again relinquished. It will be recollected 
that Surinam, having been seized by the English, 
was in 1676 restored to Holland, in exchange for 
New York. 

Hitherto we have been considering mission 
work, which continued for seventy years, among 
the Indians of Guiana. We now turn to a differ- 
ent race — the race which engaged our attention 
in the last lecture. In the West Indies, fugitive 
slaves are called Maroons; in Guiana, as before 
stated, Bush Negroes. They are numerous ; in- 
stead of diminishing, they have increased in num- 
bers, being now estimated at seventeen thousand, 
while the whole population is perhaps seventy-five 
thousand. They have a superior physique, and, 
from their acquaintance with the colonies and 
with retreats inaccessible to white men, have 
many times proved dangerous neighbors. Scat- 
tered bands combine, and thus render themselves 
formidable ; hence a cordon of forts was con- 
structed by the Dutch for the defense of the 
colony at a cost of seventeen millions of guilders. 
The Government of Surinam, after making peace 
in 1764 with the free negroes — free because fugi- 
tives from bondage — solicited the Moravians to 



140 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. iv. 

send missionaries among them. The next year 
three Brethren went out and settled on the Sara- 
macca. The language of the Bush Negroes is a 
conglomerate of several European tongues and 
fragments of African dialects. They had retained 
their African superstitions, and were in bondage 
to heathen priests and priestesses skilled in prac- 
ticing on the credulity of the people. Like the 
same class in many parts of the world, these im- 
postors would pretend to become possessed of the 
spirit of some patron divinity, and, under such 
alleged inspiration, exhibit the most violent agi- 
tation and frightful bodily contortions. I have 
witnessed such in India, and can hardly conceive 
of anything more demoniacal in appearance. In- 
stinctively these sorcerers array themselves against 
the missionaries, u their craft being in danger to 
be set at naught ; " and the Moravians, with all 
their experience in unpromising fields, have sel- 
dom found one more discouraging than this. 
Still, they were not absolutely without success; 
and it was a great help that the chief of the Sara- 
macca Bush Negroes, Arabi, the first convert and 
first native teacher of his nation, became a true 
Christian and their firm friend. He was a man 
of strong good sense. Before avowing himself 
a convert, having heard the missionaries say that 
no idol could help or hurt any one, he went to 
the river where an alligator, the village god, had 
his haunt. Seeing the creature, he delivered this 



lect. iv.3 BAMBEY. 141 

harangue: "I intend to shoot thee. Now, if thou 
art a god, my bullet will do thee no harm ; if thou 
art a mere creature, it will kill thee." His shot 
was fatal. After becoming a Christian, he one 
day took occasion to address the heathen with 
great plainness in regard to future punishment ; 
but some of them replied that, as so many were 
to share in it, the suffering would be less to each 
one. To which Arabi answered : " Try the ex- 
periment, and all of you put your fingers together 
into the fire, and let us see whether each indi- 
vidual will not feel the same pain as if he were 
alone.*' 

The negroes moved their settlement from 
time to time. Bambey and New Bambey (1784), 
which became the capital of the Bush Negroes, 
are stations well known in earlier Moravian 
annals. The Brethren gave the former place 
(1773) that name because, in the native lan- 
guage, the word signifies Only Wait, or Have 
Patience — Bambey, " By-and-by." This signifi- 
cance conveys a needful suggestion. In view of 
frequent sickness and deaths, and the intense 
superstition of the negroes, these missionaries 
had need of "long patience." In all evangel- 
istic fields, some spot may be looked for which 
will bear to be christened " Only Wait." 

The roving habits of Bush Negroes greatly inter- 
fered with their progress. Occasionally, as in 181 0, 
a revival of diabolism seized upon them. The diffi- 



142 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.iv. 

culty of obtaining supplies of food and other 
necessaries, and the debilitating effects of the cli- 
mate, often brought the missionaries into a pitiable 
condition. One of the Brethren, Rudolph Stoll, 
relates that, while suffering from a most danger- 
ous attack of acclimating fever, his body was 
covered with painful sores. Lying in his cot, 
alone and helpless as a child, he saw an immense 
swarm of ants enter through the roof and spread 
themselves over the inside of his apartment. 
Expecting to be devoured by these voracious 
visitors, he commended his soul to God, and 
looked for speedy release from suffering. The 
insects covered his bed, entered his sores, caused 
intense pain, but soon retired ; and from that 
time the good man began to recover. 

In 1790, the negroes in Upper Bushland 
showed a strong desire to be taught, and were 
visited from time to time ; but sickness and 
deaths among the missionaries prevented the 
establishment of a station in that quarter. By 
the close of the century (1773-1800), fifty-nine 
heathen at Bambey had received baptism, of 
whom seventeen had died in the faith, and there 
were forty-nine persons then belonging to the 
congregation. Portions of the New Testament, 
as well as a hymn-book, have been translated into 
the native language. Erasmus Schmidt repaired 
to the place (1840) and labored abundantly, till 
he fell- a victim to the deadly climate (1845). 



lect. iv.] BAMBEY. 143 

Afterwards (1848) the station was removed to 
the waterfall Gansee, two days' journey beyond 
the bounds of the colony, where Barsoe began 
his labors in 1849, but died after a few months. 
For three years (1850-1853), the widow of Mis- 
sionary Hartmann remained there alone, instruct- 
ing old and young, and exhibiting a rare amount 
of unostentatious, persistent heroism. Eighteen 
years, from 1826 onward, she labored with her 
husband ; but after his death, so far from leaving 
the country or seeking a post of comfort, she 
volunteered for the hardest service and the most 
unhealthy region. She went among the Bush 
Negroes, in their land of death, and everywhere 
secured their confidence and gratitude. Through 
her whole missionary career, she manifested a 
devotedness rarely seen. Wherever the climate 
was most unhealthy, the privations greatest, and 
service the most laborious, thither was she ready 
to go. At Berg-en-Dal, notwithstanding the en- 
mity of the man who managed the plantation 
there, and who would gladly have driven her 
away, but dared not for fear of incensing his 
negroes, she stayed on. Contempt, poverty, dis- 
ease, could not force her away. At the station 
Koffy Camp, in an ordinary negro hut open on 
both sides, she lived among wild and lawless 
savages, suffering from an entire want of suitable 
food. Fully entitled is her name to a place 
among the heroines of the missionary enterprise. 



144 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. iv. 

She was a mother of missionaries. One son, for- 
merly among the Australian natives of Victoria, 
is at this time among Indians in Canada ; another 
son has seen more than thirty years of useful 
service, chiefly in Kaffraria, where he lost all 
his private property in the recent Basuto war. 
A daughter became the wife of a missionary, Mr. 
Heyde, at Kyelang in Thibet. 

Two Moravians, Sand (1851) and Bauch 
(1854), were taken fatally sick almost imme- 
diately upon their arrival at this place. Since 
then the congregation, numbering one hundred 
and seventy souls, has been without a settled 
missionary. 

Just a century having elapsed, there was a 
spiritual awakening among heathen dwellers in 
the dense forests of the interior, far up the 
Surinam and Saramacca rivers. This occurred 
at Gingee, the present name for Old Bam- 
bey, when the prayers of missionaries buried 
long ago seemed to be finding fulfillment in a 
renunciation of heathenism and a desire to be- 
come Christians. This was through the instru- 
mentality of John King, a converted negro, 
belonging to the Matuari tribe, who made preach- 
ing tours among the Bush Negroes. The pro- 
posed visit of missionaries to that region was 
prevented by the death, within a few months, of 
five of their number. We will listen to John 
King, at Maripastoon, now an efficient helper. 



lect.iv.] TWO TROPHIES. 145 

He tells us (1868) how his old associates were 
bent on holding him to their idolatry. " They 
said, ' You must kneel down and adore our god.' 
But I cried, ' No, no ! ' Upon this they fell into 
a violent rage, and were all very fierce, crying, 
c And you shall worship our god before you are 
joined to the church.' Thus they all cried out 
at me. The noise wearied me when they sur- 
rounded me in this manner ; yet I would not wor- 
ship the idol. I fell on my knees, and prayed to 
God, saying, * O my Lord Jesus, if I do all this of 
myself and in my own strength, then may all my 
words prove vain ! But if thou, my Lord Jesus, 
hast thyself given me this charge to perform it, 
I pray thee, my Lord, help me, that thy words 
may be manifest, and that they may all perceive 
that thou hast called me!' And when I had 
thus called on the name of the Lord, they rose 
from their seats and went away murmuring." l 
Another, Kalkoen, an aged and influential chief, 
prayed thus at Maripastoon, one of the present 
out-stations : " I am a chieftain, O God, yet I 
am nothing. Thou hast appointed me to govern 
this people ; as thy servant, I have to watch over 
it for good. But I have turned my back on thee 
in the darkness of my ignorance. I have fol- 
lowed the wicked customs of my ancestors, and 
obeahs and witchcraft and idolatry have made 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXVIII, 146. 
10 



146 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

me turn my back on thee. But now I turn away 
from all these works of the Devil; I and my 
children will have nothing more to do with them 
forever. I was ignorant, O God, and therefore 
I sinned against thee ; but now I feel my guilt. 
Pardon all my sins, O my God, and preserve 
me from returning to my old ways, and help me 
to obey thee. I desire now to be quite thine 
own. And now I ask thy aid to enable me to 
lead my children, my people, unto thee." *■ 

The Moravian settlements established in behalf 
of Surinam slaves, being remote from the coast, 
made it desirable for one or more of the Brethren 
to live at Paramaribo, that there might be an 
agency in the capital. Hence another experi- 
ment was made in that city. The tailoring busi- 
ness was started; and, negroes hired from their 
masters being employed, access to slaves for 
religious instruction was thus obtained. The 
vehement prejudice which had existed in that 
city against the Moravians gradually yielded. 
Some of the negroes began to show an inter- 
est in the gospel, and at length were baptized 
(1776). A chapel was built (1778), and the next 
year there were a hundred negroes at the preach- 
ing service, besides forty who received special 
instruction with reference to being baptized. 
Converts displayed an intelligent firmness in 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXV, 351. 



lect.iv.j AT PARAMARIBO. 147 

maintaining a stand as Christians. While the 
heathen negroes were one day engaged in a dance, 
Governor Tessier went up to a female slave, 
whom he had known as a celebrated dancer, and, 
with a view to test her sincerity, offered her a 
present if she would join in the amusement — an 
unwarrantable temptation. Declining the bribe, 
she asked if he did not know that she, upon 
baptism, had changed her name from Krah to 
Elizabeth, and was no longer the same person. 
His Excellency replied : " Yes, I know it, and 
j'ou do right; keep this in mind till the end of 
your life, and it will be well with you." A lad 
of sixteen, who was threatened by his master, a 
Jew, with flogging on account of his baptism, 
replied : " That you may do ; but you cannot 
thereby rob me of the Lord Jesus, and the grace 
he has given me in these days." 

At the opening of the present century, the 
baptized negroes amounted to three hundred and 
fifteen, besides many catechumens and other regu- 
lar attendants at the chapel. Fifteen years later 
(1815), the congregation amounted to six hun- 
dred and sixty-three, of whom more than five 
hundred were communicants. One of the Breth- 
ren wrote : " Our monthly prayer-daj^s, as also 
the communion-clays, are distinguished by a pecul- 
iar experience of the grace and love of our Sav- 
iour toward his flock." Leprosy prevails to a sad 
extent among the negroes, and spiritual leprosy in 



148 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

yet more revolting forms ; but the word and grace 
of God prove adequate to remove this greater evil. 

The missionaries at Paramaribo extended their 
labors to plantations round about. The Govern- 
ment became more favorably disposed, and con- 
signed to them a piece of land on the river Com- 
mewyne, where had stood a fortification called 
Sommelsdyke, and two missionaries removed there 
(1786) ; but, the place being peculiarly unhealthy, 
both died within a few weeks. Similar mortality 
has also at times been experienced even at the 
capital. The case has occurred in which thirteen 
deaths have taken place among these Christian 
laborers within the space of six months. But 
men "baptized for the dead" were always ready 
to take places thus made vacant. At Sommels- 
dyke, before the end of the first year, more than 
forty slaves had been received into the church, 
and there were upwards of a hundred and fifty 
regular catechumens. On the part of masters 
there was opposition, some of whom exacted an 
increase of labor on the Sabbath in order to 
prevent the negroes from attending divine ser- 
vice ; and yet the station was for a time success- 
ful, though in 1818 it had to be relinquished. 

Taking an inventory of all these Moravian la- 
bors in English and Dutch Guiana, we find, at the 
opening of the present century, that, during 
the sixty-five years then closed, one hundred and 
fifty-nine brethren and sisters had been engaged 



lect.iv.] AT SOMMELSDYKE. 149 

in the work; seventy-five of whom — more than 
one annually — had died on the ground, sixty -three 
had returned to Europe, and twenty-one were 
still at their stations. Eight hundred and fifty-five 
Indians, fifty-nine Bush Negroes, and seven hun- 
dred and thirty-one slaves had been baptized — 
sixteen hundred and forty-five in all. Some of 
the coolies also, brought from Eastern Asia, have 
shared in the blessings of that gospel which is 
carried to South America for the benefit of those 
whose proper home is Western Africa. Two 
years ago, all the adults baptized at one station 
in Demarara were Hindus. To the labors of Mo- 
ravian missionaries, almost exclusively, are the 
black population of Surinam who profess Chris- 
tianity indebted. 

The station at Paramaribo is now flourishing. 
In 1828, a large new church was dedicated, the 
Government and citizens lending aid ; and a 
society of wealthy inhabitants has -been formed 
to assist the mission. A pleasing proof of the 
value now set upon Moravian ministrations is 
afforded by the fact of the erection of a church 
at Charlottenburg, which is situated in a curve 
of the river Commewyne, to which the congrega- 
tion there contributed more than twelve hundred 
florins. Three negro brethren gave between them 
no less than sixty-four florins ; ' and a poor 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXXII, 103. 



150 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. iv. 

old woman who brought five florins could not 
be persuaded to keep a part of this sum for her 
own necessities. For thirty-three years before 
the Emancipation Act, Government had commis- 
sioned the Moravians to take pastoral charge of 
slaves and prisoners in the forts and at military 
posts; yet, down to 1844, slaves were not allowed 
to learn to read. The city of Paramaribo, which 
presents an inviting appearance outwardly — the 
streets broad, straight, lined with orange, lemon, 
tamarind, and other trees — has been the scene 
of several great fires ; but in the midst of them, 
one in 1821 and three in 1831, Divine Providence 
signally interposed to save the mission buildings. 
This is at present (1881) one of the most suc- 
cessful Moravian missions. The New Testament 
in Negro-English has been printed by the British 
and Foreign Bible Society ; numerous stations 
have been begun, fourteen in all, with seventy- 
four missionaries and twenty-one thousand six 
hundred and eighty-three adherents, of whom 
more than six thousand (6,201) are communicant 
members ; while in Demarara, or British Guiana, 
where the mission was renewed in 1878, there are 
two stations, four missionaries, and about three 
hundred church-members. 

It was characteristic of Moravian habits of 
thought, especially the habit of ranking spiritual 
interests before all others, that the baptism of 
the first negro convert at Paramaribo should be 



lect.iv.] PRESENT CONDITION. 151 

commemorated by a centenary observance (July 
21, 1876). The church, which will seat two 
thousand four hundred persons, was decorated 
with garlands of flowers, and with various spe- 
cies of palm-branches ; three public and thronged 
services were held ; the Te Deum, translated into 
Negro-English, was sung; the document record- 
ing the baptism — nearly destroyed by the action 
of the climate — was brought out and read ; and 
the occasion closed by the Brethren entering 
anew into covenant with one another to main- 
tain mutual love and love to the Saviour, upon 
that opening of a new century of Christian 
labor. 

On leaving the continent of South America, 
it may be well for us to have in mind a distinct 
impression regarding some of the present embar- 
rassments under which Moravians are laboring. I 
do not now refer so much to those arising from the 
climate, or from the action of physical causes. 
For example, the work at Annaszorg was begun 
in 1850, on the banks of the Warappa Creek, 
which connects the river Commewyne with the 
sea twenty miles east of the river's mouth ; but 
a shoal formed in front of the creek, that pre- 
vented the return, at ebb-tide, of water which the 
flood had brought. Plantations being thus ruined 
by salt water, owners and laborers were obliged 
to disperse. Nor do I refer to such slight annoy- 
ances as that the preacher may sometimes see a 



152 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

parrot-snake drop from the rafters to the table 
where he stands. The visits which Moravians 
pay periodically to remote plantations are toil- 
some and hazardous boat-voyages. To reach, for 
instance, one of the present scenes of labor, 
Goejaba, the Brethren have to pass thirty-seven 
waterfalls at the risk of their lives. Generally, 
in the forest savannas stretching hundreds of 
miles, sufficient dry ground for an encampment 
can scarcely be found ; anywhere there is a lia- 
bility to a flight of poisoned arrows ; everywhere 
the atmosphere is saturated with malaria; over- 
head among the trees are gigantic serpents ; 
underneath are ferocious beasts ; across one's 
path are the webs of monstrous and poisonous 
spiders ; every decayed log swarms with centi- 
pedes or scorpions. 1 

Reference is had rather to social and moral 
impediments. The Emancipation Act did not 
take full effect till 1863, the decade of apprentice- 
ship closing on July 1st of that year; but new 
difficulties have arisen from the very condition 
of freedom. The negro is morally feeble, and 
peculiarly fond of change. He is now at liberty 
to roam from one plantation to another, and 
hence is less likely to remain under uniform re- 
ligious instruction and other good influences. 
Those more thrifty will perhaps get possession 

1 Field's Indian Bibliography, 45-46. 



lect.iv.] PKESENT CONDITION. 153 

of an abandoned estate so remote or difficult of 
access as practically to put them beyond the 
reach of Christian labor. Meanwhile Jesuit Fa- 
thers offer pecuniary bribes to draw away those 
attending upon Protestant services, and Roman 
Catholic interference may be looked for on every 
mission-field under the sun. To some extent at 
the stations, and of course still more in wild for- 
ests, the besetting sins of gross sensualism abound ; 
and, with even advanced converts, constant effort 
is required to neutralize a lurking tendency to- 
ward obeahism, and various superstitions brought 
from Africa. Sickness is deemed to result from 
some malignant charm, and cure is sought from a 
counter-charm. The unevangelized or partially 
evangelized savages often rub poison under their 
nails, with which they scratch and thus kill one 
another. Iron rings are worn on the knuckles, 
sharp at the outer edge and steeped in poison. 
No wonder Missionary Schmidt said, "We are, 
here, like a gnat against a tiger!" The natives 
are constantly tormented by superstitious fears. 
Reciprocal distrust reigns; every one is afraid of 
being poisoned or bewitched by his neighbor, and 
resorts to diabolical devices for protection. Is a 
snake killed unintentionally? It will be brought 
into the village with shouting, howling and 
dancing, which last for a day and night — some- 
times for a week — till it is buried, in order to 
propitiate the evil spirits, which might otherwise 



154 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

be angry at the death. Even at Paramaribo, 
many of the negroes have what they call the 
Bukru-sickness, by which is meant that they are 
seized with an evil spirit, who is represented as 
a specter that appears here and there in the form 
of a dwarf, and manifests his presence by rapping, 
and sometimes by throwing stones. Do not 
superstition and credulity show the unity of 
black and white races? As in the West Indies, 
the family life of the negro is generally of the 
grossest kind, with a sad want of order and 
decency. 

Most disheartening is it to cast the good seed 
of the Word into such a slough. What reason- 
able expectation can there be that plants of right- 
eousness will spring up ? If religious fruits pre- 
sent anything more than the faintest resemblance 
to what is witnessed among superior races and 
older Christian communities, are not the condi- 
tions of probability fulfilled ? Contemplate speci- 
mens. Here is one of the most hopeless of cases, 
Broos, who had been a notorious rebel chief of 
black freebooters in the forests, and who jet 
became a sincere convert two years ago (1879). 
Do deeper convictions fasten upon any of our 
backsliders than upon this one at Goejaba ? " My 
sins go over my head ; I have denied my Lord 
more than Peter did. My conscience leaves me 
no rest night or day. Oh, tell me what to do 
to get rid of this fearful curse that rests upon 



lect.it.] INDIVIDUAL CASES. 155 

me, for I can bear it no longer ! My sin is terri- 
bly great." J Do we, in our neighborhood, occa- 
sionally hear delightful testimonies to the grace 
of God on beds of pain ? Missionary Lebart 
writes (1866): "A young woman suffering from 
leprosy, when asked how she was, said, ' Oh, 
teacher, I am doing very well, thanks to the 
Saviour ! ' c But,' I said, 8 you are tying there 
quite alone and suffering great pain.' ' Oh, yes,' 
she replied, ' my sufferings are sometimes fearful, 
and occasionally fever and cold come in addition 
to my old disease, and I feel intense pain in 
my back and stomach, so that for many nights 
I cannot get any sleep. Still it is well with me, 
for the Saviour is near and comforts me ; and this 
is so delightful that I can sometimes, for a brief 
moment, forget my sufferings. Sometimes the 
Holy Spirit leads me to Gethsemane, before Pilate 
and Herocl, and to Golgotha; and then I say to 
myself, ' Behold what the Saviour has borne for 
me ! Surely I ought to be able to bear a little 
pain, for I am a sinful creature. Nothing de- 
lights me more than the contemplation of our 
Saviour's atoning death, and his words and deeds, 
and the Psalms. Oh, teacher, I cannot say enough 
about the joy and comfort I derive from them.' " 2 
What can our religion do for the negro women 



1 Periodical Accounts, XXVI, 395. 

2 Periodical Accounts, XXVI, 397-8. 



156 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clbct. iv, 

of Guiana ? Abiena, who had been a most big- 
oted, benighted heathen and a fierce enemy to 
the Christians, presented herself for baptism at 
Koffy Camp (1866), and received the name of 
Eve. Weeping for joy at the ordinance, she 
addressed those present: "My brethren and 
sisters, listen to what I have to say. We are 
here in God's presence. He hears and sees 
everything. He knows us all thoroughly. He 
also knows me. I do not know much; but this 
one thing I truly know, that I am now a child 
of God and Jesus Christ, who purchased me, a 
poor, poor being, with his blood. You know 
that I was a servant and slave to the Devil, but 
— great, great praise be to God on high ! — that 
is all past and gone. Do you hear that ? The 
Saviour has made me free. His death is my life. 
This heart of mine belongs to him. I will cleave 
to him. Thus I will live, thus I will die. These 
are my words, and they show truly what is in 
my heart." * 

At the centenary in Paramaribo, it appeared 
that in that place twelve thousand persons have 
been baptized, and seven thousand and three 
hundred have been admitted to the Lord's Sup- 
per. In the congregation, at that date, there 
were over two thousand communicants (2,443), 
and there are six thousand eight hundred souls 
under the charge of the Brethren. 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXYIII, 148. 



lect.iv.] MOSQUITIA. 157 

We now proceed northward ; and it will be 
noticed that, throughout these lectures, the order 
in which missions are taken up is determined 
partly by geographical, as well as chronological, 
relationship. From Guiana to the Mosquito 
coast is a sail equal to two thirds of the dis- 
tance from here to England. This tract, called 
Mosquitia, on the northeastern projection of Cen- 
tral America, washed by the Caribbean Sea, is 
a small native state, with an area of from fifteen 
to twenty thousand miles — the same as West 
Virginia. The coast, for about two hundred 
miles, from Bluefields Lagoon to Cape Gracias a 
Dios, is low, level, hot and humid; lagoons and 
inland channels communicating with one another 
are numberless; the country well watered, ex- 
tremely fertile, with a tropical vegetation exceed- 
ingly varied and luxuriant. Mahogany and other 
hard woods grow in great profusion, and are 
largely exported ; India rubber has also become 
an important article of trade. Cedars of prodi- 
gious size, and reaching a height of two hundred 
feet, may be seen. Here too is the towering 
Palma Real, cabbage-palm, the most beauti- 
ful of all trees belonging to that family in our 
hemisphere. Jaguars abound in the forests; 
apes are abundant; venomous serpents are com- 
mon in the gardens and houses, and alligators 
in the rivers. 

The population consists chiefly of Indians — 



158 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

Wulwa, Slim, Waiknas, and Caribs, the other 
name for whom, Cannibals, has entered our lan- 
guage as a common noun, and indicates one of the 
horrid practices of that fierce race. 1 Of these 
tribes, the Moseos, Mosquitos, 2 from whom the 
country takes its name, are superior to the rest ; 
though all are squalid savages, ignorant and de- 
graded, among whom polygamy and infanticide 
are common. They subsist for the most part by 
the chase and by fishing; but their principal 
source of gain from May to August is the tortoise. 
Like all such people, they are thoroughly im- 
provident; and the Indian, if he has nothing to 
eat, invites himself to some hut not so badly off 
as his own. And here again, back from the coast, 
we light upon Bush Negroes, who poison one 
another in their bread and their rum ; who are 
swayed by a dark, gross idolatry, each village 
having a special god. Stones, trees, wood-ants 
and serpents are worshiped. There are also 
black and colored Creoles, Samboes or half In- 
dians. Among these various races, regard is 
paid exclusively to evil spirits, their whole re- 
ligion consisting in a dread of malignant powers 
and of death. Siva, the spirit of the waters, 

1 Edaces humanarum carnium novi helluones anthropophagi, 
Caribes alias Cannibales appellati. — Peter Martyr. 

2 Die Moseos oder Mosquito — Indianer, eigentlich Missitos, 
sind keine reinen Indianer mehr, sondern fast sammtlich Midatten 
und Sambos. — Waitz : Anthropologie der Naturvolker, IV, s. 289. 



lect.iv.] GOVERNMENT. 159 

is deemed peculiarly powerful ; the rainbow is 
his ensign, which he hoists when angry. Hence 
natives will not leave the house while a rainbow 
is visible. Thus they pervert the divine token 
of peace and covenant promise into a symbol of 
terror. Medical sorcerers of both sexes, Sukias, 
so called, supposed to have supernatural agency, 
are at hand. 

The whole population of Mosquitia probably 
does not exceed one hundred thousand, if indeed 
it is not much less. The chief town, Bluefields, 
is a village straggling for a mile and a half along 
a lagoon, and has eight or nine hundred inhabi- 
tants, Negroes, Mulattoes, Spaniards, Englishmen, 
Americans, and a few Germans; the English 
language being in use there, and somewhat gen- 
erally on the coast. Intemperance is almost 
universal. Occasional tornadoes bring devas- 
tation; that of 1865 destroyed nearly all the 
churches and mission houses, and that of Octo- 
ber, 1877, left only twelve houses standing in 
Bluefields. 

The Mosquito shore was formerly under the 
protection of Great Britain. It will be recol- 
lected that the difficulties which had arisen here 
between the United States and Great Britain 
were settled by the Clay ton-B ill wer treaty, 
which bound those governments " not to occu- 
py, fortify, colonize, or exercise dominion over, 
the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central 



160 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

America." The proceedings of England have 
seemed, from the first, very much like a political 
farce. In 1687, a Mosquito chief was taken to 
Jamaica, with a view to his placing the coun- 
try under the protection of Great Britain. Sir 
Hans Sloane relates how the man, escaping from 
his keepers, " pulled off the European clothes his 
friends had put on, and climbed to the top of a 
tree." A more recent Mosquito monarch was 
crowned at Belize in 1825 ; and an English writer, 
describing the occasion, says: "Before his chiefs 
could swear allegiance to their monarch, it was 
necessary that they should profess Christianity; 
and accordingly, with shame be it recorded, they 
were baptized in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. They dis- 
played total ignorance of this ceremony, and, 
when asked to give their names, took the titles 
of Lord Rodney, Lord Nelson, or some other 
celebrated officer, grievously disappointed when 
told that they could only be baptized by simple 
Christian names. After this solemn mockery was 
concluded, the whole assembly adjourned to a 
large schoolroom, to eat the coronation dinner, 
when these poor creatures got intoxicated with 
rum — a suitable conclusion to a farce as wicked 
and blasphemous as ever disgraced a Christian 
country." 1 In 1861, the independence of Mos- 

1 Dunn's Central America, 1828. 



usct.it.] THE MISSION. 161 

quitia was proclaimed, and King George, an 
Indian, was recognized as hereditary chief. At 
the present time, the political condition is ex- 
tremely unsettled. The Government of Nicara- 
gua is endeavoring to obtain possession of the 
coast, and no law or safety exists. Captains in 
the navy and in the merchant-service, who visit 
the coast, have been in the habit of baptizing 
children whether their parents are married or 
not. Roman Catholic priests will baptize any 
who desire it, without the least instruction, six 
shillings a head being the price. Anglo-Saxon 
residents sometimes sink below the natives in 
their morals. Indian and negro, by three hun- 
dred years of contact with what is called civiliza- 
tion, had failed to be in the least elevated there- 
by. Nothing worth speaking of had been done 
by the English toward Christianizing natives ; 
while the habits and influence of American sea- 
captains and traders were, for the most part, 
grossly demoralizing. 

In 1849, three Moravians commenced this, the 
most recent but one of their missions, establishing 
themselves at Bluefields ; and the same year the 
first convert, a negro woman, received baptism. 
In 1855, Princess Matilda, half-sister of the king, 
so called, was baptized — the first-fruits of an in- 
gathering from the Indians, though her life after- 
wards did not honor the profession she had made. 
"Put not your trust in princes." As might be 

11 



162 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

expected, opposition has been met with from the 
Roman Catholics of Nicaragua ; and the Nicara- 
guan Government, by laying excessive import 
duties, aimed to break up the mission (1865). 
Yet the Brethren have succeeded in establishing 
a number of stations and a number of schools. 
To catch the attention, to awaken an interest 
in things spiritual, has required great patience. 
Look in, for a' moment, upon a service conducted 
at an Indian dwelling. You shall see people 
lying listless in their hammocks or on the 
ground ; some one at the door with a long stick 
is hardly able to keep off dogs and cattle, but 
does succeed by his noise in drowning the 
preacher's voice. Yet faith has triumphed. At 
Bluefields, polygamy, once universal, is now un- 
known. Instead of naked savages, men and 
women are seen suitably clothed; and a collec- 
tion, amounting to ninety-five dollars, was re- 
cently (1881) taken up among them in aid of 
South-African sufferers by the Basuto war. Not 
long ago (1876), two Germans arranged a dance, 
but found to their surprise that only a few of 
the lowest people attended it. Displeased at 
this, they wished to arrange a ball, as they 
called it, and, going to a native member of the 
Moravian church, offered him fifty dollars for 
the loan of his house to dance in for one night. 
He answered that he belonged to the church, 
and did not approve of it. "But," said these 



lect.iv.] THE MISSION. 163 

gentlemen, " the Lord Jesus himself danced when 
he was on earth." Hereupon the brother placed 
a Bible on the table, and asked them to show 
him the place where that was written. The 
Germans took their hats and left. 

The schools established have accomplished 
something; but the use of the English lan- 
guage is inadequate, and inappropriate for effect- 
ing the elevation of the people. At the present 
time there has come to be a fashion, almost a 
mania, throughout the missionary world, for the 
use of our mother tongue, which often occasions 
an unproductive outlay of time, strength and 
funds. At Ephrata, in this Central-American 
mission, an Indian, who had been brought up 
at the Mission House, was lately (1881) found 
able to read the Bible fluently in English, while 
at the same time he confessed that he knew 
nothing at all of the meaning of the words. 
The Moravians in Mosquitia have happily be- 
come convinced that they must master the 
vernacular, though a very difficult language, and 
they have already prepared a small grammar 
and vocabulary. In 1862, a man and woman 
were baptized at Ephrata. In 1862, the first man 
of the Wulwa tribe received the same ordinance 
at Magdala — a tribe living along rivers some- 
what in the interior ; and within the last twelve- 
month (1880-81) there has been a religious 
awakening at that station, the Holy Spirit being 



164 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

poured out on Indians, Creoles and Spaniards ; 
and, in the course of one month, fifty converts 
were added to the church. During the present 
year (1881), there has been a work of special 
grace at Bluefields also, from which place a 
missionary wrote in August : " Last week, one 
hundred persons joined the church, and at our 
evening meetings the crowd is such that we 
can not kneel to pray." The number of stations 
is seven ; * of missionaries, fourteen ; and of mem- 
bers, one thousand one hundred and forty -six. 

Two lectures have now been devoted to a 
survey of Moravian mission-work on the islands 
and the mainland that border the Caribbean Sea. 
Not as mere tourists, but as Christian visitors, 
have we made this survey; and, before leav- 
ing the region, we will cast a rapid glance at 
the shores of that sea, a body of water twice the 
size of the Gulf of Mexico. In aspect and in some 
of the physical conditions, the surroundings of 
this little ocean are nowhere surpassed on the 
face of the globe for beauty, or for a teeming 
and magnificent vegetation. The climate is, for 
the tropics, mild and agreeable, oceanic rather than 
continental, with an entire exemption from the 
hot, parching winds to which India and the Medi- 

1 One of these is Ramah — repeating the name of a station 
in Greenland, and of another in Labrador. But in Palestine 
there were six or seven places having substantially the same 
designation — Ramah, 



lect.iv.j CARIBBEAN SEA. 165 

terranean are subject. The winter, especially of 
the West India Islands — I speak from some 
measure of personal acquaintance — cannot be 
excelled anywhere on the face of the earth. The 
atmosphere is balnry, and at night intensely 
serene ; the moonlight so brilliant as to enable 
one to read the finest print, and Venus uniformly 
casts a shadow. 

" Beautiful islands ! where the green 
Which Nature wears was never seen 
' Neath zone of Europe ; where the hue 
Of sea and heaven is such a blue 
As England dreams not ; where the night 
Is all irradiate with the light 
Of starlike moons, which, hung on high, 
Breathe and quiver in the sky." 

Yet here is the home of tempests, the focus 
of devastating hurricanes, of which more than 
one hundred and thirty have been distinctly 
recorded since the archipelago began to have a 
place in historical records. Earthquakes are not 
uncommon ; volcanic mountains and active volca- 
noes are found. The whole chain, stretching from 
Florida round to the South-American coast, has 
the appearance of a submerged mountain system, 
whose peaks alone indicate the line of the old 
connection, like the masts of a sunken fleet once 
drawn up in a half-moon ; the Great Antilles 
answering to the heavy line-of-battle ships, and 
the Caribbee Islands to smaller men-of-war and 
transports. 



166 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

Nature is here in sympathy with man, and is 
the reflex of history. " The whole creation 
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until 
now." No quarter of the world shows a darker 
history than this. The Caribbean Sea was the 
peculiar field of the buccaneers. Bluefields and 
Belize, the capital towns of two Central-Ameri- 
can states, were named for two famous pirates. 
Numerous lagoons, bays and inlets, clothed to 
the water's edge with the dark-green mangrove, 
furnished those daring marauders with ready 
places of concealment ; and, for a century and 
a half, the villanies of piracy made these fair 
regions the abode of terror. But, in the more 
normal course of human society, we behold 
Columbus, after twenty years of neglect and 
ridicule, having set foot on San Salvador and 
opened a new hemisphere to the astonished na- 
tions of Europe, ordered home in chains, the 
victim of envy and intrigue — all but his chains 
being taken from him ; so that he who gave 
Spain another world had neither safety in it, 
nor yet a cottage for himself or his wretched 
family. 1 

Looking at the original inhabitants, we see 
Caribs, strongly built, fierce, warlike, a terror to 
milder tribes, a sort of tropical Vikings ; far more 
numerous, the gentle and peaceable Arawaks; 

1 Letter of Columbus to King Ferdinand, 1504. 



lect.iv.] MORAL DEVASTATION. 167 

yet, with, the exception of a few wretched relics 
still remaining on four of the smaller islands, all 
were expelled or exterminated long ago. The 
inhabitants of Hispaniola, computed to have been 
a million, were soon reduced to sixty thousand. 
Natives of the Lucayan Islands, to the number 
of twelve thousand, early became extinct through 
hard service under ground or by famine. Never 
was a more tantalizing or diabolical cruelty than 
that practiced by Spaniards, who, finding that 
these simple islanders entertained the idea that 
departed souls go to blissful regions in the South, 
persuaded them that they had come from that 
paradise, and would take the Lucayans where 
they should see their friends and enjoy all man- 
ner of delights. Thus seduced, they accom- 
panied the Spaniards to Hispaniola and Cuba, 
where they found themselves victims of the cruel- 
est slavery, from which suicide was their only 
relief. Perfidy the most monstrous, brutality 
without parallel, characterized the Castilians. 
Here first, in capturing natives, they employed 
mastiffs, trained to mangle their bodies if resist- 
ance was offered. They, not the natives, de- 
served to be called savages. This New World 
seemed to them a paradise ; they made it a 
slaughter-house, and one generation sufficed very 
nearly to accomplish the work of extermination. 
At first the credulous natives took the Spaniards 
to be more than men ; they soon found them not 



168 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.it. 

less than devils. u Holy Mother Church" had 
no protest to utter. The tender-hearted Las 
Casas was at first only sneered at or brow- 
beaten. 1 In her impious, proselyting bigotry, 
Rome could sanction the forcing of captives into 
the water, and, after baptism had been admin- 
istered to them, the cutting of their throats to 
prevent what was called apostasy. There were 
Spaniards who, in their frenzied fanaticism, vowed 
to hang or burn thirteen natives every morn- 
ing, in honor of the Saviour and his twelve 
apostles. " O Liberty ! " cried Madame Roland 
on reaching the scaffold, " what crimes are per- 
petrated in thy name IV " O Christianity !" we 
cry, " what crimes are committed in thy name ! '! 
South and Central America, as well as regions 
farther to the north and to the south, supplied 
a quota for the awful holocaust which Spanish 
invaders offered to their god Mammon. 2 

As if it were not enough to enslave and exter- 
minate aboriginal races, Africa must be -subsi- 
dized by the same relentless greed. Hence a 



1 The Bishop of Burgos, when informed by him how seven 
thousand Indian children had perished in three months for 
want of parents who had been sent to the mines, said, laugh- 
ingly : " Look you ! what a droll fool ! What is this to me, 
and what is it to the king 1 " 

2 Altogether about sixteen millions of natives, Robertson 
in his History of America asserts, were destroyed during the 
wars which they waged in this New World. 



lect.iv.] SLAVE TRADE. 169 

bonus upon war and cruelty between the tribes 
of that continent to supply the West India and 
South-American market; hence the horrors of 
the middle passage — a space only ten or fifteen 
inches wide being allowed to each person. The 
poor creatures were stowed in like so many bales 
of goods, and fifteen per cent sometimes died 
on the voyage. To know the slave trade, one 
must see the handcuffs and leg-bolts for linking 
human beings two and two ; the thumb-screws for 
torturing them; and the instrument for wrench- 
ing open the mouths of such as refused to eat. 
At the time Herrnhut was founded, two hundred 
English vessels were engaged in the slave trade ; 
and, in the course of a century (1680-1786), two 
million one hundred and thirty thousand negroes 
were imported into the British West Indies. 

For wretched Africans kidnapped, treated thus, 
and forced into servitude, could there be any 
hope ? Has any improvement been effected ? 
Long ago, one not a missionary, a planter, gave 
answer: " Formerly we could hardly procure 
ropes enough on Monday for punishing those 
slaves who had committed crimes on Sunday, 
twenty, thirty and even more being hung; but, 
since the gospel has been preached to them, 
scarcely two are hung in a whole year, and 
these, for the most part, are strange negroes, 
who have not been long on the island." Not 
till the third decade of the present century could 



170 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.iv. 

a beginning be made in the work of negro educa- 
tion, even on the English islands, nor till the 
year 1841 on the Danish islands. For more than 
a hundred years, the Brethren had not been 
allowed to open a school, that the slave might 
learn to read the Word of God; nor in other 
ways had they more than the slightest oppor- 
tunity to instruct children and youths. 

When it is considered in what a savage state 
the slave trade delivered to the West-Indian and 
South-American planter its victims, worshipers 
of fetiches and believers in obeahism, how very 
unfavorable for Christian access was their condi- 
tion of hard bondage, it must be conceded that 
a most noble achievement was effected by the 
United Brethren. They inaugurated a change 
in the moral aspect of the region. Other Chris- 
tian bodies, following their example, have also 
done nobly. Even for the sake of their own 
personal safety, planters might well have borne 
the whole expense of these missions. " What 
security have you," said the Moravian Bishop 
Joannes de Watteville, son-in-law of Zinzendorf, 
to the Governor of one of these islands, more 
than a hundred years ago — " what security have 
you against the slaves rising and destroying you 
all?" The Governor took him to a window, 
and, directing his attention to some Moravian 
mission-stations, answered : " This is our secu- 
rity. Negroes who are converted will never rise 



lect. iv.] AMELIOBATION. 171 

in rebellion ; and their number is so great that 
the others could never conspire without their 
knowledge, and they would inform us." 

It has been the lot of these humble evangelists 
to be little known or appreciated by either the 
literary l or the commercial world. But the abject 
man, African and Indian, of dark skin and of 
darkened understanding, has felt the quickening 
power of Christian love ; he has found there is 
a white man not too proud to enter his hut, 
to sit down by his side, tell him what Jesus 
Christ has done, what a heaven there is for the 
believing barbarian no less than for the believing 
European, and it has filled him with wonder ; 
it has made him first a man, then a new man 
in Christ Jesus. The savage can be saved. 



1 Mr. Anthony Trollope remarks in his West Indies and 
Spanish Main : " At thirty a man devotes himself to proselyt- 
ing ; and, if the people be not proselytized when he reaches forty, 
he retires in disgust." From his flippant and unphiianthropic 
estimate of the negroes in those islands, Mr. Trollope, like too 
many others, appears to have taken no pains to learn what 
Christian men have done in their behalf, and, least of all, to 
acquaint himself with the persevering labors of Moravian 
Brethren. 



LECTURE V. 

MISSION TO GREENLAND, 



MISSION TO GREENLAND. 



The course of Divine Providence is a chain, 
of which some events seem to be insignificant. 
In the movements of men, incidental results are 
often more important than the leading object. 
A shepherd boy, sent with supplies to his breth- 
ren in camp, becomes at once the champion, and 
afterwards the monarch, of Israel. John Mil- 
ton, traveling in Italy, witnesses a rude drama 
called A Mystery, and Paradise Lost is the result. 
Count Zinzendorf visits Copenhagen to attend 
the coronation of King Christian VI, and the 
two earliest foreign missions of the United Breth- 
ren come into being. 

We have already seen how the mission which 
first gave the gospel to West-Indian slaves took 
its rise ; we are now to learn how Moravians 
came to engage, the very next year, in Arctic 
evangelization. Zinzendorf, a personal friend of 
the new Danish monarch, was not attracted to 
Copenhagen by a desire to witness the pageantry 
of a state occasion ; he was intent on serving 
the King of kings. The God of missions, in 
leading him to that court at that time, had large 
thoughts concerning him. While there (1731), 

(175) 



176 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.v. 

he sees two Eskimos, who were baptized by 
Egede, the Danish missionary; he hears much 
about that remarkable man's labors, and learns 
with grief that the mission to Greenland was 
to be given up. Returning to Herrnhut, he 
speaks of that country and its perishing hea- 
then. A simultaneous impression is made, not 
only upon Dober and Leupold, who offer them- 
selves for Christian service among the negroes 
of St. Thomas, as has already been narrated, but 
upon two others. One of them, Matthew Stach, 
tells the story thus : " I was then at work with 
Frederick Bonisch on the burying-ground called 
the Hutberg. He was the first person I made 
acquainted with what passed in my mind; and 
I found that he had been actuated, on the same 
occasion, with the same desire to promote the 
salvation of the heathen. ... As we were both 
of one mind, and confidently believed that our 
Saviour's promise would be verified to us, 'If 
two of you shall agree on earth,' etc., therefore 
we retired to the wood just at hand, and kneeled 
down before him, and begged him to clear up 
our minds in this important affair, and to lead 
us in the right way. Thereupon our hearts were 
filled with uncommon joy, and we omitted no 
longer to lay our desire before the congregation 
in writing, with perfect resignation as to which 
tribe of heathen our allotment should be, though 
we felt the strongest leaning to the Greenlanders." 



lect.v] OFFER AND ACCEPTANCE. 177 

Some time elapsed before any reply was made 
to this offer. Such an undertaking then required 
the test of much deliberation and earnest sup- 
plication. In the mean time, Frederick Bonisch 
went on a long journey ; and Christian David, 
the leader of emigrants from Moravia, who felled 
the first tree at Herrnhut, conceived a desire to 
accompany this pioneer party to Greenland, and 
see them settled there, as Nitschmann accom- 
panied Dober to St. Thomas. Matthew Stach, 
speaking of himself and his cousin Christian 
Stach, who was to be associated with him, says : 
'• We had nothing but the clothing on our backs. 
We had been used to make shift with a little, 
and did not trouble our heads how we should 
get to Greenland or live there." It was an im- 
pulse from Heaven that moved those young men. 
They belonged to a good stock; the fathers of 
both had been severely punished for the flight 
of their sons from Moravia, the land of religious 
darkness and tyranny; had even been put in 
irons and sentenced to hard labor. Among the 
various and rare mineral treasures of their native 
land, these Brethren must be accounted as two 
of her choice opals. 

The three men, Christian David and the cous- 
ins Stach, 1 set out for Denmark January 11, 
1733. At Copenhagen they found great uncer- 

1 Often spoken of by mistake as if they were brothers. 

12 



178 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. v. 

tainty whether the Danish mission of Egede, 
which had been established about ten years be- 
fore, would be renewed ; they found that their 
own expedition was by many deemed romantic 
and ill-timed; and, supposing they could reach 
the country, how were they to subsist there ? 
If not murdered, they must starve ! Persisting 
in their purpose, they made application to the 
first lord of the bedchamber, Count von Pless, 
who at once stated many difficulties. No wonder 
their plan seemed chimerical ! If the well-edu- 
cated, indefatigable Egede, in circumstances com- 
paratively favorable, had accomplished so little, 
what could be expected from these uneducated, 
unordained artisans ? Lay missionaries were at 
that time a novelty. But Count von Pless saw 
they were men of faith ; and, remembering that in 
all ages God has often chosen the " weak things 
of the world," he commended them to the king, 
who at length resolved to renew communication 
with Greenland, and encourage endeavors to 
Christianize the heathen there. With his own 
hand, he wrote to Egede, commending these 
humble brethren to his kind regard. Count von 
Pless became a good deal impressed by the ear- 
nest simplicity of the men, and, unsolicited, 
made them a present toward the expense of their 
voyage and early settlement. a But how do you 
propose to procure food in Greenland?" he in- 
quires. u By the labor of our hands," they an- 



lect.v.3 THE COUNTRY. 179 

swer, " and God's blessing. We will build us 
a house and cultivate the land" — not knowing 
that they would find little besides rock and ice. 
The Count objects, " There is no wood to build 
with." They answer, "Then we will dig in the 
earth and lodge there." u No," said the Count, 
"you shall not be driven to that shift. Take 
wood with you and build a house ; accept these 
fifty dollars for the purpose." Other distin- 
guished persons added to their stock. 

In the month of April (1733), they embarked 
on his Majesty's ship Caritas, and, after a voy- 
age of six weeks, entered Ball's River, almost 
the only river in Greenland. But to what have 
they come? The peculiar home of the fox and 
the white bear, and of sea-fowls so numerous as 
at times to darken the air. With few other 
exceptions, there is little land-life. Almost the 
onty relief is that no venomous reptiles are found. 
The exuberance of terrestrial life and the magni- 
tude of forms which characterize the tropics are 
here transferred to the water. The elephant and 
rhinoceros seem dwarfish beside that species of 
whale which sometimes attains a length of one 
hundred feet. Nillson, in his work on the Scan- 
dinavian fauna, 1 estimates the full-grown Balaena 
mysticetus at one hundred tons, or two hundred 



1 Skandinavisk Fauna, Vol. I, 623. Quoted by Dr. Robert 
Brown in Manual of Instructions, etc., 317. 



180 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, v. 

thousand pounds, equal to eighty-eight elephants. 
From medusian animalcules in astonishing abun- 
dance, there is a gradation upwards to the walrus 
and the narwhal; each tribe of larger animals 
feeding upon one beneath, and all finding Polar 
pasture-ground immensely productive. From that 
great Arctic aquarium there come shoals of her- 
ring in dense masses, to supply food for nations 
in more hospitable regions. What Scandinavia 
once was to middle and lower Europe, such 
continually is that Polar sea to southern waters, 
the officina gentium. 

We look more particularly at Greenland. Shall 
it be reckoned to America ? Shall we call it an 
island, or a continent ? It is four times the size 
of the present German Empire, a broad country, 
with only a narrow belt, chiefly on the western 
coast, accessible to man. We may term it the 
Polar Continent without an interior — any interior 
for the purposes of human existence. Indeed, if 
we understand by that term land or habitable 
foothold, it has no interior at all. Not "froin 
Greenland's icy mountains " do " they call us to 
deliver." That is a poetic myth; there is no 
living creature on those hights to call. Ground, 
supposing it to exist, is no more visible, and is 
less accessible, than the bottom of the ocean. So 
far as exploration is concerned, we know no more 
of inner Greenland than was known when Eric 
the Red first set eyes upon the shore a thousand 



lect.v.] ICEBERGS. 181 

years ago. All we can reasonably infer is that 
there exists one vast, dreary glacier expanse, 
devoid of beast, bird, or insect — a Sahara of ice 
instead of sand, where not even a moss or lichen 
appears. An awful silence reigns, broken only 
when the stormy wind arises. It must have been 
the same geographical irony which first called 
this Polar world Greenland that, at a later date, 
gave to one Arctic point the illusive name of 
Cape Comfort. Much more appropriately did 
John Davis, an English explorer in the sixteenth 
century (1585), christen it The Land of Desola- 
tion. 

The conjecture seems to be reasonable that the 
country is a vast aggregate of rocky islands, 
cemented into unity by a mass of perpetual ice — 
the frozen Antilles of the North. The western 
coast, bold and rocky like that of Norway, is 
indented with numberless gulfs or fiords, and 
these are mere havens of icebergs. Falling snows 
accumulate on the higher portions of the univer- 
sal ice-field ; these consolidate, and, by their mass 
pressing upon the glaciers, help to force those 
congealed rivers down the valleys that open into 
the firths, where the huge extremities are broken 
off, not by gravitation, but by the buoyant action 
of the sea underneath. The mass groans and 
creaks ; then follows a crash, with a roar like the 
discharge of artillery, attended by a tremendous 
agitation of waves, and an iceberg is launched. 



182 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.v. 

Inlets extending sometimes a hundred miles are 
studded with icebergs, and form the highways by 
which those frozen mountains — which equal, in- 
cluding what is beneath as well as above the 
surface, the highest mountains in England — float 
out from the glaciers when these prolongations 
of the great Mer de Grlace reach the sea. The 
mighty masses, sometimes almost regular crystals, 
sometimes in fantastic shapes, three fourths under 
water, find their way into Baffin's Bay, and south- 
ward into the Atlantic, imparting a chill to our 
seaboard till near midsummer. Are we impressed 
by the great ice-rivers of Switzerland ? Yet how 
dwarfish are they beside Humboldt's glacier, 
which has a facial breadth of sixty miles ! What 
terrestrial phenomenon can be more grand than 
such a glacial covering of the country, in some 
places probably thousands of feet thick, moving 
on slowly, century after century, and rolling 
frozen cataracts into the sea! 

Here landed our missionaries. Hans Egede 
received them cordially. 1 From an early date 
the congregation at Herrnhut have annually com- 
piled a little book containing two texts of Holy 



1 Not long afterwards, partly through the fault of Nitsch- 
mann, who was not so discreet and well-poised as most Mora- 
vians, the relations between the Danish and Moravian mission- 
aries became less pleasant. The views and methods of the 
two were dissimilar, and to the present day there is not all that 
cordial intercourse between them which could be wished. 



lect.v.] THE ESKIMOS. 183 

Scripture — one from the Old Testament, known 
as " The Daily Word ; " the other from the New 
Testament, denominated "-The Doctrinal Text." 
They are used at family worship, and furnish 
topics of remark at the public meeting. The lit- 
tle volume for the present year (1882) is the one 
hundred and fifty-second in the series. A sug- 
gestive connection has often been found by the 
Moravians between the word of the day and some 
notable occurrence on that day. The text for 
the day of the Brethren's embarkation, April 10, 
was (Hebrews xi: 1), " Faith is the substance of 
things hoped for — the evidence of things not 



seen." 



" We view Him, whom no eye can see, 
With faith's perspective steadfastly/' 

The whole undertaking was clearly one of 
faith. The story of their early hardships is 
truly moving, but courage and hope did not 
fail. "Let but the time for the heathen come," 
they wrote, " and the darkness in Greenland must 
give way to the light ; the frigid zone itself must 
kindle into a flame, and the ice-cold hearts of 
the people must burn and melt." 

But to what a people have they come ! We 
refer to the inhabitants as they were when regu- 
lar intercourse began to be resumed between 
Europe and " The Land of Desolation," early 
in the last century. The Eskimos are distinct- 
ively the Polar people, the most northern people 



184 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. v. 

on our globe, occupying the Arctic shores from 
Greenland westward across the continent of 
North America, and, 'indeed, including the Na- 
mollos, extending four hundred miles along the 
Asiatic coast of Behring's Strait. No other ab- 
original people are more widely scattered. Be- 
tween the eastern and western extremes of these 
hyperboreans there is a reach of not less than 
five thousand miles. The Eskimos are a shore 
people, seldom found at a distance of more than 
twenty or thirty miles from the sea, or from 
streams near their outlet. Along the American 
Arctic shores they have a monopoly, save that, 
toward the western American frontier, two In- 
dian tribes, the Kennayan and the Ugalenze, 
have advanced to the sea in order to enjoy fish- 
ing; while on the eastern frontier are a few 
European settlers, as the English at various posts 
of the Hudson's Bay Company in Labrador, and 
the Danes in Greenland. Of the latter, there 
are not now usually more than two or three 
hundred. That vast empire of frost belongs to 
this people, who have a preference for the inhos- 
pitable, and by choice are denizens of desolation. 
In spite of their wide dispersion and the small 
amount of present intercourse between remote sec- 
tions, much uniformity exists. Their geograph- 
ical situation secures to them comparative isola- 
tion, and they have the usual conceited ignorance 
of tribes and of individuals so situated. Innuit 



lect.v.] THE ESKIMOS. 185 

— the plural of innu, man, " the people," the men 
par excellence — is the title which they arro- 
gate to themselves. 1 Such assumption is by no 
means peculiar to Arctic regions. Every Arawak 
Indian in Guiana, where we have so recently 
been, names his tribe and language as those of 
the Lokono, which signifies "the people." The 
Caribs of that quarter apply to themselves the 
term Caringa, which also denotes " the people ; " 
and, in the language of their neighbors the Acca- 
woios, the word Kapohu, by which the different 
branches of their race are designated, means 
"the people." 2 This is a species of vanity com- 
mon to many rude and less intelligent tribes ; 
nor is the spirit which promotes it a monopoly 
of uncivilized countries or of modern times. 
The patriarch of Uz met with it : " No doubt 
ye are the people, and wisdom will die with 
you." An obscure tribe which Sir John Ross 
found, in latitude 77° on the upper coast of 
Greenland, supposed themselves to be the only 
inhabitants in the world. When Dr. Kane first 
visited the little tribe living on Smith's Sound, 
they were greatly surprised to find there were 
any other human beings outside of their abode. 

1 The French name Esquimau, now beginning to be displaced 
by Eskimo, is a corruption of an Abanaki word, which signifies 
" those who eat raw flesh ; " Charlevoix says, "mangeur de viande 
crue" 

2 Brett's Indian Tribes of Guiana, 97, 98, 255. 



186 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.v. 

The attachment of most people to their birth- 
place is in the inverse ratio of its real attrac- 
tiveness. What Bishop Spangenberg said of the 
Indians of North America holds true of these 
heathen Eskimos : " It is harder for a native to 
quit his country than for a king to leave his 
kingdom." 

This fringe of sparsely distributed Eskimos 
along the Polar coast constitutes a race somewhat 
by itself ethnographically also. There is a sharp 
distinction between them and the inland tribes 
of our continent; and, when the two come in 
contact, mutual hostilities arise. The origin and 
relationships of the Eskimos are obscure. They 
seem, however, to form a connecting link be- 
tween northern Mongolian Asiatics and the North- 
American Indians. Their language is extremely 
unlike European languages, save that it has a 
structural affinity with the Basque, and in a simi- 
lar way resembles the Finn or Hungarian group. 
It is copious in grammatical forms, its particles 
and inflections more numerous than the Greek, 
but the agglutinative verb absorbs other parts of 
speech. The noun and verb are almost the only 
parts of speech, inflection supplying the place of 
prepositions. No prefixes are used; but suffixes 
are plentiful, and these particles, though destitute 
of meaning themselves, yet, being added to the main 
word, produce a modification of sense. The verb 
can include a pronoun both as subject and object, 



lect.v.] RACE AND LANGUAGE. 187 

and hence constitute even a complex sentence. 
Owing to this poly synthetic feature, the words 
sometimes come to have great length. Here is 
one as a specimen, taken without search from 
a Greenlander's letter : Tipeitsugluartissinnaungil- 
anga. Here is another specimen : Savigeksiniari- 
artokasuaromaryotittogog, which one word signifies, 
" He says you will also go away quickly in like 
manner, and buy a pretty knife." Of numerals 
there are only one to five, answering to the fin- 
gers on the hand. Ten is two hands ; twice ten 
— referring to fingers and toes — is "the man 
finished." The number twenty-four, for instance, 
is four on the second man ; eighty is " four men 
finished." There is a dual as well as singular 
and plural number. Considering the extent of 
their dispersion, and the absence of intercourse 
between different portions of the people, it is 
remarkable that, with only dialectic differences, 
their language should remain the same through 
such a vast stretch of territory from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific. 

In person, Eskimos are not tall; neither are 
they dwarfish, as formerly reported, but stout, 
with large heads, small necks, hands and feet, 
and muscles not well developed. The face, flat, 
with high cheek-bones, is seldom washed, except 
in summer, and is ordinarilv so smeared with 
soot and clotted train-oil as not to show that 
the real complexion is fair, or at any rate not 



188 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

darker than that of the Portuguese. In personal 
and domestic habits, filth to the last degree 
characterizes them — their clothes dripping with 
grease and swarming with vermin; and the sti- 
fling atmosphere of their habitations, especially 
during the winter, is one which no foreigner 
with delicate olfactories could endure. 1 They eat 
most voraciously; ten pounds of flesh, besides 
other food, are sometimes consumed by one per- 
son in the course of a day. A man will lie on 
his back, and the wife feed him till he can no 
longer move. Cooking is not an indispensable 
preparation of their seal-flesh, the chief article of 
food. Like other savages, they alternate between 
fasting and famishing ; unlike most other savages, 
they habitually consume raw flesh and fat. Find- 
ing a dead seal, they will sometimes rush upon it, 
though decay has so far advanced as to generate 
poison, of which they die. This animal, abun- 
dant and easily caught, supplies apparel for the 
person, covering for the boat, a bladder to float 
the harpoon, oil for the lamp Avhich lights and 
warms the house, besides other useful articles, 
and hence is much more to the Eskimos than 
rice is to the Chinese, or the potato to the Irish. 
Men and women dress very much alike, always 



1 Two Quaker gentlemen, truthful and guarded as to their 
language, who visited Greenland in 1863, declared, " No poor 
man in England would have so poor a place for his pigs." 



lect. v.] PERSON AND HABITS. 189 

in skins, and their clothes are well made. The 
fires kindled are chiefly for cooking, but of this 
there is comparatively little. It remains a singu- 
lar fact that, in the coldest climate inhabited 
by man, fire should be less used than an}^where 
else in the world, equatorial regions perhaps 
excepted. 1 

Like the Sandwich-Islanders originally, their 
salutation consisted in rubbing noses; and, like 
those islanders, they at first mistook European 
ships for huge birds. The kayak, a shuttle- 
shaped boat, eighteen feet long, twenty inches 
in the widest part, which requires for its con- 
struction about as many skins as a hunter can 
secure in one season — a characteristic affair, 
and without parallel among any other people in 
its structure and in the dexterity of its manage- 
ment — is occupied by one man only, and is used 
in hunting. The Eskimos employ the dog for 
draught — an advance toward civilization found 
among no other aboriginal American people. The 
nearest approach was by the Incas of Peru, who 
used the llamas for bearing burdens, though not 
for draught. Life is a struggle for mere exist- 
ence. Accumulation of property or knowledge 
seems out of the question, everything being 
held in common, except what may be deemed 
indispensable to each; namely, clothing, a boat, 

1 Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States, I, 58. 



190 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. v. 

and in summer a tent. Toward setting up a 
new family, nothing besides a tent and boat is 
absolutely required, and no other goods are 
hereditable. 

The women eat apart from the men. Girls 
are of small account; boys may make hunters 
and support their parents. In disposition the 
Greenlanders are not fierce, but mild; they are 
envious, ungrateful and phlegmatic, as if their 
constitution had been touched with frost. A 
stolid indifference to the perils and sufferings 
of others may often be witnessed. People stand- 
ing on the shore, and seeing a boat upset at 
sea, would look on with entire unconcern if the 
occupant was not a personal friend. They would 
make merry at his struggle with the waves, and, 
sooner than put off for a rescue, would allow 
him to perish before their eyes. Yet, in respect 
to mechanical ingenuity, more brain-power is 
shown by them than by most other savage na- 
tions who are more favorably situated. They 
possess a remarkably accurate knowledge of to- 
pography. Youths taken to Denmark learn trades 
as readily as the Danes. Unlike North- American 
Indians, they are not averse to labor — at least, 
much less averse than they. Eskimos have great 
power of endurance and a cool presence of mind. 
Certain games of agility and strength are prac- 
ticed, ball-playing the favorite one. Singing and 
drum-playing, with dancing and declamation, may 



lect.v.] PERSON AND HABITS. 191 

be met with. Among the converts, there has 
occasionally appeared a man with considerable 
sharpness of intellect and power of reasoning. 
One of them, speculating on the doctrine of final 
causes in a manner not unworthy of Archdeacon 
Paley, said he often reflected that a kayak, with 
its tackle, does not grow itself into being, but 
requires to be shaped by skill and labor ; a bird 
is made with greater skill than a kayak ; still 
no man can make a bird. "I bethought me," 
said the Eskimo, "that he proceeded from his 
parents, and they from their parents. But 
there must have been some first parents; 
whence did they come? Certainly, I concluded, 
there must be a Being able to make them all, and 
all other things — a Being infinitely more mighty 
and knowing than the wisest man." l Civil gov- 
ernment in any definite form — ruler, magistrates 
or courts of justice — hardly exists. The Eskimo 
language — happy circumstance ! — has no words 
for scolding ; people are expected to live in amity. 
Nor have they any profane words. They never 
make war upon one another, and avoid giving 
offence. Annoyance with offenders is indicated 
by silence, the aim being to bring shame upon 
them. Quarrels of all kinds are settled by a 



1 A heathen Eskimo, when asked, "Who made the world? " 
replied: "We don't know, but it must have been some very 
rich man." 



192 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

song-duel. Any one owing another a grudge 
composes a song about it, and sends him word 
when he will sing it against him. Cheering by 
the assembly, or dissent, indicates at once the 
judgment and the punishment ; for the Green- 
lander dreads nothing so much as to be despised 
and laughed at by his countrymen. The people- 
have a store of traditions and popular tales. 

On the score of immorality and superstitions, 
the Eskimos are no worse than the average of 
barbarous nations. They believe in spirits, good 
and evil ; and in the chief of spirits, Torngarsuck, 
who lives in a happy subterranean mansion. The 
chief female divinity is a spirit of evil, the mis- 
chievous Proserpine of the North. They con- 
ceive of the earth, with the sea supported by it, 
as resting on pillars and covering an under-world 
accessible by various entrances from the sea and 
from the mountain clefts. Above the earth is 
an upper world ; and, after death, souls go up 
or down, the latter being much preferable be- 
cause warm and amply supplied with food. Cold 
and famine reign in the upper world, where the 
inhabitants are playing at ball with a walrus's 
head, which occasions the aurora borealis. 1 Their 
ideas of the future are dim and fluctuating, espe- 
cially as regards retribution ; and yet they have 
a horror of annihilation. The chief character 

1 Rink's Tales and Traditions of the Eskimos. 



lbct.v.j KELIGIOST. 193 

among them is the Angekok — sorcerer, magician, 
counselor and physician. He corresponds to the 
Northern-Asiatic Shaman, or the Indian medicine- 
man, and prepares for his magic feats by pro- 
longed solitude and fasting. They believe in 
ghosts, the reappearance of spirits after death ; 
also in witchcraft, which is invoked for sinister 
purposes. The one supposed to be possessed of 
this disreputable power is regarded as able to 
leave the body, and approach the object of ill- 
intent, invisible to any one except the clairvoyant. 
This class of persons does not seem to differ greatly 
from what the Scotch imagine their " canny folk " 
to be. Such, in the main, are the Eskimos, who 
in very small numbers continue heathen today; 
such were the Eskimos of Greenland when the 
first missionaries approached them. 

We picture to ourselves the Moravian Brethren 
simple-minded men, endeavoring to get access to 
this people — a people who did not desire their 
presence, and who seemed determined to have 
nothing to do with them, except in the way of 
begging or stealing. The language must be 
mastered, but these new-comers are unlearned. 
They have never seen a grammar. Egede loans 
them his remarks on the Greenland language, 
and bids his children assist them ; but they must 
first learn the Danish to understand their in- 
structors. The Eskimo language, with its copi- 
ous vocabulary, its complex structure, so unlike 

13 



194 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

their own, seems an insolvable puzzle. Natives 
steal the manuscripts which had been written 
out with wearisome pains, and, instead of enter- 
ing into conversation, ask if they are not going 
away soon. The roving habits of the people, in 
summer-time, increase the difficulty of access to 
them. But the Brethren plod on ; and after 
more than a year of discouraging experience, 
they enter into a solemn covenant : " We will 
with diligence continue the study of the language 
in love, patience and hope." 

After a destructive contagion which seemed 
almost to depopulate the country, 1 we might sup- 
pose these missionaries would see reasons for 
retiring. But no ; they had been accustomed to 
meditate upon a verse engraved on copperplate 
at Herrnhut : " He calleth those things which be 
not, as though they were." The advice to aban- 
don Greenland they met with this trusting reply : 
" God's ways are not man's ways ; he that called 
us hither can still accomplish his aim by us." 
They firmly determine to wait for years, if only 
to save one soul. "All men," they wrote, "in- 
deed look upon us as fools, and those more espe- 
cially who have been longest in this country, 
and are best acquainted with the character of its 



1 Later, in 1754, there was a prevailing sickness, of which 
sixty converts died; and in 17S2 another, which carried off 465 
converts. 



lect.v.] ACQUIRING THE VERNACULAR. 195 

inhabitants. . . . But he, our Jesus, whose heart 
is filled with tenderness towards us and the poor 
heathen, knows all our ways ; yea, he knew them 
before we were born. We are willing to venture 
on him our lives and all we have." 

During the second year (1734) of this Mora- 
vian mission, two additional Brethren went out 
to establish a new station. One of them was 
Frederick Bonisch, who at the outset had offered 
himself with Matthew Stach ; * the other was John 
Beck, whose grandfather, crippled by torture, 
had died young, and who, for conscience' sake, 
had himself been manacled and nearly starved 
within a Roman Catholic dungeon. They toil on 
under the greatest embarrassments, especially in 
acquiring the language. Occasionally a native 
calls upon them, and stops, it may be for a night, 
but always with some selfish purpose, to obtain 
shelter, food, needles, or something else. The 
Eskimos, thinking that they confer a great favor 
upon the missionaries, for which pay ought to be 
given, declare bluntly that, if the missionaries will 
not give them any more stock-fish, they will listen 
no longer. All manner of mockery and scorn is 
encountered. The natives mimic the reading, 
singing and praying ; perform droll antics, accom- 



1 Matthew Stach afterward came to this country, and, dying 
in 1787, was buried at the Moravian settlement of Bethabara 
in North Carolina. 



196 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

panied with drumming and hideous howling; 
jeer at their poverty and taunt them for their 
ignorance : " Fine fellows to be our teachers ! 
"We know very well that you yourselves are 
ignorant and must learn your lessons of others." 
They used to consider themselves superior to 
Europeans in good breeding ; and, when they 
saw a modest stranger, their highest compliment 
was, "He begins to be a Greenlander." The 
heart of the savage is much like the heart of 
the civilized man. In every community, one may 
meet with petulant cavils or diabolical humor, 
such as the Moravians met in Greenland. " Show 
us the God whom you describe," said the natives, 
" then we will believe in him and serve him. 
. . . Our soul is healthy already, and nothing is 
wanting if we had but a sound body and enough 
to eat. You are another sort of folk than we. 
In your country, people may perhaps have dis- 
eased souls, and indeed we see proofs enough, in 
those who come here, that they are good for 
nothing; they may stand in need of a Saviour 
and of a physician for the soul." 

At one time, the missionaries heard not a word 
from friends at Herrnhut for two years, and 
occasionally they were upon the point of starva- 
tion. Raw seaweed was devoured. The Eski- 
mos would not sell them even seal's flesh — a 
delicacy compared with the tallow candles they 
were now and then compelled to eat. " Your 



lect.v.] FIBST CONVERSION. 197 

countrymen," they would often say, "must be 
worthless people, since they send you nothing, 
and 3^ou will be fools if you stay here." Still the 
persevering men formed resolutions like these : 
" We will never forget that in a confidence 
resting upon God our Saviour, in whom all the 
nations of the earth shall be blessed, we came 
hither. . . . We will not be anxious and say, 
'What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, 
and wherewithal shall we be clothed ? ' but cast 
our care on Him who feeds the sparrows, and 
clothes the flowers of the field." At length, 
toward the close of 1735, a native with whom 
they had conversed came quite a distance, and, 
by what he brought, was the means of saving 
their lives. The next year, a gentleman in Hol- 
land, without solicitation, sent them supplies by 
a Dutch vessel. 

The fifth year of toil and disappointment went 
by ; but the year 1738 comes, and patient wait- 
ing receives an earnest of its reward. At the 
end of May the missionaries wrote : " Courage, 
dear brethren, and believe with us that our Lord 
will yet at last do glorious things in Greenland. 
Meanwhile we will not intermit our prayers and 
supplications for the salvation of these poor 
people, that the power of our Redeemer's blood 
may be apparent in their hearts." Fervent 
petitions were* answered. John Beck was one 
day copying out, in a fair hand, a translation of 



198 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

the Gospels, when a company of native South- 
lanclers, passing by New Herrnhut, the Breth- 
ren's first station on Ball's River, call and wish 
to know what is in that book. The missionary 
reads to them. He tells them that the Son of 
God became man that he might redeem them 
by his sufferings and death; that they must 
believe if they would be saved. He enlarges on 
the subject, at the same time reading the account 
of our Saviour's agony in the garden. One of 
the listening savages, Kaiarnak, steps up to the 
table and says, with much earnestness: "How 
was that? Tell me that once more, for I too 
would fain be saved." The hour has come for 
the Holy Spirit to awaken something responsive 
in an Eskimo soul, the first well-defined instance 
in Polar regions. 

Christ's sufferings and death, the innocent for 
the guilty, the God-man in mere man's place, 
is the central truth of the gospel, wherein lies 
the hiding of its power. That supreme expres- 
sion of divine love moves when nothing else 
will; therein is a Heaven-appointed adaptation. 
Its effectiveness appeared on the day of Pente- 
cost ; and, from that day to the present, nothing 
has been found with a tithe of the same spiritual 
force. Arctic temperature neither promoted nor 
hindered access to the heart of Kaiarnak. A 
missionary, traversing the large business street 
of a city in Southern India, once spoke to a 



lect.v.] POWER OF THE CROSS. 199 

native concerning the forgiveness of sin by Jesus 
Christ. " What is that you say ? " exclaimed the 
Hindu. " Tell me that again ; explain that to me ; 
I want to hear that repeated." 1 This is not a 
matter of continental or insular residence. When 
Mr. Nott was reading the third chapter of John's 
gospel, to South Sea Islanders, at the sixteenth 
verse he was interrupted by one of them : " What 
words were those you read ? What sounds were 
those I heard ? Let me hear those words again ! " 
The missionary read once more : " For God so 
loved the world that he gave his only-begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not 
perish, but have everlasting life/' The man rose 
and demanded, " Is that true ? Can that be true ? 
God love the world when the world not love 
him ? God so love the world as to give his Son to 
die ? Can that be true ? " The verse was read yet 
again, and the wondering native burst into tears. 
Nor is this a question of race. An athletic Kafir, 
hearing of " wrath to come," was filled w^ith an- 
guish. The Moravian missionary spoke to him 
of our crucified Saviour. Trembling, he said: 
" Sir, I am old and stupid ; tell me that again." 
And, when told again, tears rolled down his sable 
face. Has that event less power on the heart of 
woman? Tah-nek, of the Cherokee nation, was i 
suffering extreme bodily pain. The missionary 

x London Missionary Magazine, 1849, p. 58. 



200 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

told her of Jesus, his love, his sufferings, his 
power to save. 1 Her dislike gave way to deep 
interest, and she said, " Tell it again." She for- 
got her own pains, and, after listening further, 
said, weeping : " Tell it again, for I too must be 
saved." 2 What can so rouse, so captivate, as this 
truth of the cross ? For renovating men and 
women, there is no theology like the theology of 
redemption. It can penetrate alike the savage 
and the man of culture ; in the palace or the 
hovel ; in arctic or tropical regions. Let explor- 
ing expeditions keep up their search, if they will, 
for a new route to the opulent East; there is no 
"northwest passage " to Paradise. 

Kaiarnak became an undoubted Christian con- 
vert. He labored with his companions, and they 
too became interested. Before the month was 
out, three large families of Southlanclers pitched 
their tents near the missionaries, that they might 
hear the news of redemption. The next year 
(1739), it became increasingly evident that a way 
was preparing in the hearts of sundry Eskimos. 



1 "There is over you the great burden of sin," said one of 
our Madura catechists to an old woman carrying a heavy load 
on her head ; " you must go to Jesus, the bearer of sin-bur- 
dens. He will take away your sins, and you may enter heaven." 
" Tell me that again," said she, and with many tears went on 
her way, repeating: "I am a sinner ; Jesus, take my sin-burden 
and love me ! " 

2 Washburn's Reminiscences of the Indians. 



lect.v.] SPIRITUAL COINCIDENCES. 201 

Kaiarnak, receiving the name of Samuel, was 
baptized, as well as his wife, son and daughter. 
Soon after, a band of murderers from the north 
killed a brother-in-law of Samuel, and threatened 
his life too. Taking his family, he retreated to 
the south ; but, wherever he went, spoke to his 
countrymen of the things of God. After a year, 
he returned, bringing his brother and family, for 
whose conversion he had been laboring. But his 
useful life was short. The year following (1741), 
he said to the friends weeping around him : 
" Don't be grieved about me ; have you not often 
heard that believers, when they die, go to our 
Saviour, and partake of his eternal joy? You 
know that I am the first of you that was con- 
verted bv our Saviour : and now it is his will that 
I should be the first to go to him." 

Nothing in the spiritual world, any more than 
in the physical world, is wholly isolated. Our 
earth is a great magnet, and there is a diffu- 
sive electric element pervading nature. In regard 
to its channels and laws, we know but little. 
We have, however, learned that magnetic storms 
are connected with the Aurora Borealis ; that 
there are occasions when all the magnets of the 
world are simultaneously affected. Religious move- 
ments are sometimes similarly coincident. Without 
the slightest intercommunication, revivals of relig- 
ion have begun at the same time in different coun- 
tries, or on land and on shipboard. June 2, 1738, 



202 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. v. 

was the day when Kaiarnak put the question : 
" What is that? Tell me that again." The same 
3 r ear, missionaries on St. Thomas were imprisoned ; 
yet the Word of God was not bound, for the negro 
congregation increased daily, and " the grace of 
God prevailed mightily among them." In the 
spring of that year, Whitefield, on his first voy- 
age to this country, preaches the crucified Saviour 
to an irreligious company ; bad books and cards 
are thrown overboard ; an army officer and other 
passengers are converted. The same year, Presi- 
dent Edwards's Narrative of Surprising Conver- 
sions was republished in Boston ; and that, too, 
is the period when its author, in whom the work 
of sanctification was far advanced, had marvelous 
experiences. David Brainerd also was in the 
midst of soul-sorrows before coming to a dis- 
covery of free grace in Christ Jesus. The date 
now in mind, June 2, 1738, was less than a fort- 
night after Charles Wesley prayed (May 21) as 
never before, and found peace. Three days later, 
John Wesley, who for ten years had been groping 
and struggling, but has now, through the fidelity 
of Peter Bohler, a Moravian, been convinced of 
his "want of that faith whereby alone we are 
saved," is able for the first time to record his 
assurance of salvation. Two weeks more and he 
is on his way to Herrnhut, where he receives 
many suggestions and delightful impressions. "I 
would gladly," says he, " have spent my life here ; 



lect.v.] SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE. 203 

but, my Master calling me to labor in other parts 
of his vineyard, I was constrained to take my 
leave of this happy place." Was not the year 
1738 a year of quick though unconscious sym- 
pathy between different parts of the Christian 
world ? Was there not a real though inexplicable 
connection between that borealis flash in Green- 
land and the " cloven tongues of fire " which 
sat on many heads in different parts of Chris- 
tendom ? 

From this time, Christianity as a living power 
was evidently gaining foothold at New Herrnhut, 
the first Moravian station in Greenland. If it be 
asked, What evidence has that gross and dark- 
minded people given of spiritual life ? we reply — 
(1.) They experience a sense of sin — one good 
evidence, whether among savage or civilized peo- 
ples. " No," said Christiana, when a heathen fe- 
male complimented her for not being so very bad, 
"no, that is not the reason; the Saviour has not 
chosen me because I am good, but because I am 
a wretched, poor, corrupted sinner. He receives 
none but poor sinners who cannot be satisfied 
without him." (2.) They learn where to look 
for help and hope. An old man, long full of 
animosity to the Word of God, comes begging 
to be told more about the Crucified One, and 
then exclaims, " O Jesus, help me, poor creature ! " 
A native assistant said : " It is with us as when 
a thick mist covers the land, which hinders us 



204 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

from seeing any object distinctly. But, when 
the fog disperses, we get sight of one corner of 
the land after another ; and when the sun breaks 
forth we see everything clear and bright. Thus 
it is with our hearts. While we remain at a 
distance from our Saviour, we are dark and 
ignorant of ourselves; but the nearer the ap- 
proaches we make to him, the more light we 
obtain in our hearts, and thus we rightly learn 
to discover all good in him and all evil in our- 
selves." Yet another pens the following prayer 
— and to precomposed prayers, so simple, so 
childlike, who will object? — "My dear Saviour, 
my name is Nathaniel. I will open my whole 
heart to thee in writing, in thy presence. I am 
deficient in everything. I find that I have not 
yet devoted my whole heart unto thee ; and yet 
thou hast died for me, Jesus Christ. I wish I 
was so that thou couldst rejoice over me. Dear 
Saviour, I would willingly live so as to please 
thee." 

When we remember the coarseness, the stupid- 
ity, the groveling habits, of this people, in their 
heathen state, is it not a notable result that 
their sensibilities have been educated through 
the power of divine truth and grace ? From the 
outset of that awakening, a century and a half 
ago, apathy gave place to tenderness on the part 
of converts. When the Spirit of God had once 
touched their hearts, their eyes would often 



lect.v.] MORAL EARNESTNESS. 205 

moisten with tears. Sometimes this became very 
marked when the dying love of our Saviour was 
presented; indeed, it was not unusual for im- 
bruted Greenlanders to weep under such pre- 
sentation. The voice of prayer is heard, and in 
ejaculations like these : " My Saviour, I know 
that all things are possible to thee. Now, as 
thou hast bid us ask what we are in want of, 
therefore I pray thee hear me even at present." 
" Oh, that great Rescuer ! " exclaims another. 
Such thoughts and aspirations, when once faith 
has been exercised, bring joyful assurance; and 
we are not surprised to hear Agnes testify 
(1752) : " I am enabled to rejoice daily since 
I know that I have a Saviour, and that I have 
now nothing else to crave while I am on earth. 
Oh, had I not him nor felt him, I should be 
like a dead creature ! " 

A certain moral earnestness, early developed, 
like the tenderness of feeling shown, is all the 
more noteworthy in the midst of this race, con- 
stitutionally so stolid, so dull of apprehension as 
to the difference between right and wrong, and 
as to the imperative claims of religion. It cer- 
tainly was unusual when youths, in spite of 
parental promises, entreaties or threats, clung to 
the missionaries, out of a desire to be taught 
the way of salvation; and when J^oung women 
could show a chivalrous devotion to their reli- 
gious teachers. It was a strange phenomenon 



206 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

that a heathen Eskimo should sit up nearly 
the whole night to talk with a convert, who 
says he was now as " eager after hearing what 
is good, as the birds are after fishes which they 
swallow whole for eagerness." The first con- 
verts soon become Christian helpers, 1 and render 
efficient aid in obtaining access to heathen friends. 
Look at one of them ; his name is Daniel. " Do 
not ye think, then" — thus the man appeals to 
his benighted countrymen — "that our Saviour 
endured inexpressible pain, when in his deadly 
anguish he sweat blood, was scourged all over 
his body, had his hands and feet pierced with 
nails, and his side pierced with a spear? But 
why do I say this to you? For this reason, to 
induce you once seriously to consider it, and, 
for our Saviour's great love, to yield up your 
hearts to him, with every bad thing, to the end 
that he may free you from them by his blood, 
and bestow upon you a happy life. I can tell 
you that great happiness is to be found in him." 



1 The Brethren write : " In the mean time, Samuel fre- 
quently kept hours for prayer at home with the Greenlanders. 
Neither had Sarah [his wife] been inactive among her sex and 
the children. But, especially if there are any laid hold of by 
grace, she enters into frequent conversation with them about 
the state of their hearts; directs them with all their misery, 
according to her own experience, to the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin of the world; and, in short, seeks all 
occasions to gain something with the talents entrusted to 
her." 



lect.v.] GRATIFYING TOKENS. 207 

The Danish agents of trade, astonished at his 
course, call him "the man of God." Wherever 
he stops for a night, he takes off his cap, folds 
his hands, sings a few verses, or prays, and then 
talks to the heathen, unabashed at the presence 
of Europeans ; and all this in a way so unaffected 
that his auditors weep, and then, late into the 
night, talk about his discourses. Benjamin, a 
native assistant, was also a peculiarly devoted 
man, who in his old age would visit out-dwellers, 
when he had to drag himself to the shore leaning 
on two sticks, and requiring help to get into his 
kayak. 

Heathen Eskimos used to get rid of the dis- 
abled and the dependent by letting them perish, 
or in some other way even worse than that. 
Such barbarism has ceased, and even a "poor 
man's box " is now hardly needed. The natives, 
naturally covetous and much more ready to 
receive than to give, yet in the autumn make 
a contribution of train-oil for church purposes, 
and are in the habit of aiding their more indigent 
neighbors. When (1757) they learned how the 
Indian congregation at Gnadenhiitten, in Penn- 
sylvania, had been broken up, and those who 
escaped had lost their all, "I have a fine rein- 
deer-skin which I will give," said one ; another, 
" I have a pair of new reindeer-boots which I 
will send;" "And I," said a third, "will send 
them a seal, that they may have something tc 
eat and to burn." 



208 MOEAYIAK MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

It has been noticed that, early in the course 
of this mission, children came under the power 
of Christianity. Their hearts were drawn out 
towards the missionaries, and they would bear 
such testimony concerning the Saviour as aston- 
ished the heathen. Occasionally the young were 
so wrought upon as to leave father and mother, 
brothers and sisters, in order to enjoy Chris- 
tian instruction. They might sometimes be seen 
sitting together, singing Christian verses and 
talking about them. Is it easy to conceive of 
anything more beautiful than such children, 
amidst the dreary waste of Greenland, capti- 
vated by the story of Jesus, and lifting up their 
" Hosanna in the highest ? " The service of 
sacred song has held an important place in 
the Moravian work among the Greenlanders, as 
elsewhere. Paul Gerhardt's famous hymn, "O 
Head, so full of bruises," * became one of the 
early favorites; so did various lyric composi- 
tions of Zinzendorf and of his son, Christian 
Renatus. No one of these served a more im- 
portant purpose than the hymn, 

"Jesus, thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress." 

Not without interest, though with sadness, do 
we notice the outbreak of a delusion in 1853. 
It reveals a liability common to the rude and 

1 Haupt, voll Blut und Wunden. 



»ot. v.] FANATICISM. 209 

the more civilized — a liability of spiritual fanat- 
icism, and it supplies an evidence of the unity 
of the human race. Matthew, a young man of 
excellent character, natural gifts and religious 
attainments, to whom his countrymen gave the 
name "Great Sage," after the death of his 
mother, awoke his father, brothers and sisters, 
one night, and continued in prayer with them 
till morning. He professed to have seen the 
Lord, and to have been assured by him that 
the end of the world had come. Some of the 
congregation at Friedrichsthal and others joined 
him. At their private meetings, there were 
distortions of the face, leaping, groaning and 
shoutings. Two women, the wives of helpers, 
began to marry and to divorce, to readmit those 
who had been excluded from the Lord's Supper, 
and to celebrate that ordinance; using the flesh 
of fowls for bread, and water for wine. The 
missionaries were at length threatened and in- 
sulted. Matthew finally announced that the 
world would be destroyed the next night. He 
and some of his followers went to a mountain 
to be taken up thence into heaven. The night 
was cold, and they were all barefooted. When 
morning dawned, their delusion was gone, and, 
with feet frost-bitten, they acknowledged their 
error. 

A survey of Moravian labors in Greenland 
brings to view a great amount of privation, per- 

14 



210 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.v. 

severance and fidelity. Beyond a very frugal 
subsistence, the missionaries look for nothing in 
the way of salary, presents or perquisites ; yet 
they have not regarded their field as one of 
cheerless exile. Even in those days, when (1744) 
they had to share half-decayed seal's flesh with 
the natives, they could write : " The Lord be 
praised, amidst all this he gives us cheerful 
hearts and joy in our Greenlanders, which is 
better than abundance — nay, than all the treas- 
ures of the earth." Great perils have been 
encountered from the first. At one time, when 
the Brethren were out in search of fuel, a con- 
trary wind and driving storm kept them prison- 
ers for eight days on a desert island, in piercing 
cold and without protection. At another time 
(1804), missionary Rudolph and wife, being 
wrecked on their return voyage, lay among the 
rocks of a barren island for eight days, and 
when rescued were at the point of death. Those 
of us who are accustomed to voyaging only in 
our own latitude, have a very inadequate idea 
of what it is to approach an Arctic coast, amidst 
strong winds and currents, fog' and ice. 

" In front of the Greenland glacier-line, 

And close to its base, were we ; 
Through the misty pall we could see the waM. 

That beetled above the sea. 
A fear like the fog crept over our hearts, 

As we heard the hollow roar 
Of the deep sea thrashing the cliffs of ice, 

For leagues along the shore." 



lect.v.] STATISTICS AND RESULTS. 211 

Still, amidst the numerous voyages to and from 
Greenland, while many ships have perished, only 
one missionary, Daniel Schneider (1742), has 
lost his life at sea. The preserving goodness of 
God has been wonderful. Not till thirty years 
after the establishment of the mission did the 
funeral of a Moravian brother, that of Frederick 
Bonisch, take place in Greenland. In spite of 
extreme privations and toil, the missionaries 
have, as a general thing, had excellent health, 
and have suffered little from acute diseases. 

The whole number of Eskimos now in the 
country is estimated at from eight to ten thou- 
sand. The Moravian mission, confined to the 
southwestern coast, has six stations. New Herrn- 
hut, the earliest and most northern, was estab- 
lished in 1733; next, Lichtenfels, eighty miles 
to the south, situated on an island in Fisher's 
Inlet, established in 1758. The place is envi- 
roned with naked rocks; but the Brethren, apply- 
ing the promise, "Arise, shine, for thy light is 
come," gave to it the name of Lichtenfels, "Rock 
of Light." More than three hundred miles still 
further to the south lies Lichtenau, "Meadow 
of Light," begun in 1774; and forty miles far- 
ther on, in the same direction, Friedrichsthal, 
founded in 1824. The two more recent stations, 
Umanak and Igdlorpait, date respectively from 
1861 and 1864. 

At the present time (1881), the corps of mis- 



212 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. v. 

sionaries numbers nineteen, and the native mem- 
bership 1,545. In 1801, the last Greenlander on 
the field belonging properly to the Moravians 
received baptism; but later (1829-30), there 
came small companies of heathen Eskimos from 
the eastern or rather southeastern coast, a region 
inaccessible to Europeans, and planted them- 
selves chiefly in the neighborhood of Friedriehs- 
thal, thus coming within reach of the missionaries. 
A few of those on the eastern coast at the 
present time find their way annually around 
Cape Farewell, to barter such products as they 
have with Danish merchants, and are then ap- 
proached by Christian teachers. 

In spite of embarrassments the most formi- 
dable, Greenlanders as a body have risen from 
the condition of wild, filthy savages to that 
of a docile and civilized people. Rude, indeed, 
they still remain, mere children; but they are 
no longer brutish, nor are they idolaters. The 
barbarities of former times have ceased; old 
superstitions have nearly disappeared ; compara- 
tive kindness, order and decorum reign. A high 
degree of refinement cannot be expected, and 
might not be desirable ; but it is a noble achieve- 
ment of the United Brethren to have approached 
that continent of ice ; to have domiciled with 
a tribe so stupid, so beastly in their habits, over 
whose heads the Great Bear circles the year 
round; to have given them God's Word and 



lect.v.] STATISTICS AND RESULTS. 213 

sacred hymns; and, along with Danish co-labor- 
ers, gradually to have drawn them into the green 
pastures of a rational and religious life. 

Dr. Kane, to his great delight, found a flower 
at the foot of Humboldt Glacier. The fairest 
plant anywhere to be seen on earth was trans- 
planted to the rugged shores of southern Green- 
land by Moravian faith, and nurtured by Mora- 
vian prayers and toils. The wilderness and the 
solitary place have been made glad for them; 
and never does William Cowper sing more beau- 
tifully than when he kindles at the Christian 
heroism of these humble Germans : 

" Fired with a zeal peculiar, they defy 
The rage and rigor of a Polar sky, 
And plant successfully sweet Sharon's rose 
On icy plains and in eternal snows." 



LECTURE VI. 

MISSION TO LABRADOR. 



MISSION TO LABRADOR. 



Labrador — the country, people and mission 
— is a twin sister of Greenland. Lying between 
the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson's Bay, it is a 
great and terrible wilderness, a triangular penin- 
sula, with an area twice as large as the British 
Isles, and five times as large as the kingdom of 
Prussia. Geologically, it is said to be the oldest 
land now above the surface of the ocean. The 
interior has been but partially explored, and 
appears to be a region of hills and mountain 
ridges, and of plateaus strewn with granite 
bowlders. Lakes and swamps abound. The 
name, Terra Labrador, " Cultivable Land " — 
the only existing trace of Portuguese presence 
on the Continent of North America — suggests 
the same illusion or irony as led Eric to call the 
desolate region he had discovered Greenland, 
and Captain Cook to call one savage group 
inhabited by cannibals the Friendly Islands. 1 
Plains of moss, and, toward the south, forests 

x French explorers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence seem to 
have labored under a similar delusion when they gave the 
names Petit Bras d'Or and Grand Bras d'Or, for no quarter 
of the globe is more innocent of gold than that. 

(217) 



218 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

of stunted pines and birches, are found, but 
no fruit-trees. Even in more favored portions, 
agriculture is rendered impracticable by snow 
and ice. Here, however, is the beautiful lab- 
radorite, a feldspar remarkable for its iridescent 
tints, which was discovered by the Moravian 
Brethren. 

This sterile solitude, belonging politically to 
Newfoundland, differs less than we might ex- 
pect from the Arctic regions. Cape Chudleigh, 
the extreme northeastern point, reaches only to 
the latitude of Cape Farewell ; yet, partly owing 
to geographical position as related to winds 
and ocean currents, Upper Labrador is colder and 
more bleak than Lower Greenland. At Hopedale, 
the most southern Moravian station, seventy 
degrees below the freezing point of Fahrenheit 
have been registered. Sometimes snow falls to 
a depth of fifteen feet, houses being completely 
buried. Hoar-frost settles in greatest profusion 
and in the most fantastic forms ; rectified spirits 
thicken like oil. As the cold season advances, 
and the frost penetrates deeper and deeper, 
rocks split with loud explosive sounds. Dur- 
ing the short season of summer heat, mosquitoes, 
the pest of man and beast, swarm fearfully, and 
are more dreaded than the black bears. 

The coast-line, extending toward a thousand 
miles, indented with bays like the western coast 
of Greenland, is one long, broken precipice of 



lect.vi.] NASCOPIES AND INDIANS. 219 

jagged rocks, against which sullen waves from 
the Atlantic have dashed for ages. That stern 
rampart is flanked by numberless islands, among 
which the eider-duck is very abundant. Almost 
the only visitors ever seen in these waters are 
icebergs, those contributions of Greenland rivers 
— rivers not fluid, but solid, and ceaseless in 
their movement into the fiords, whence in huge 
fragments they reach the open sea. Floating 
down from Polar regions, they seem now a pyra- 
mid, now a coliseum, at one time a mosque, at 
another a cathedral, majestic, crystalline and with 
a wonderful play of light and shade — some of 
them nearly white, others blue as sapphires, 
others green as emeralds. 

In the interior live a few Indians, the Nasco- 
pies, called by the French 3fontagnais (moun- 
taineers) — with French features; somewhat like 
gypsies in their habits, Roman Catholic in their 
belief ; who resort once a year to the shore of the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence for the purpose of barter, 
and for certain rites of their religion. But the 
Eskimos are found, as in Greenland, chiefly by 
the coast; and, as before stated, they also skirt 
the shore of the Polar Ocean across the conti- 
nent. Indeed, along with their supposed con- 
geners, the circumarctic inhabitants on the 
Asiatic side of that ocean, they are the only 
race that, by any approach to continuity, encir- 
cle the globe. Between them and the Indians 



220 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [leccvi. 

of the interior, there existed as wide a gulf in 
feeling as in race — a bitter feud, which proved 
very destructive to the Eskimos till, chiefly 
through the efforts of Moravian missionaries, 
it was brought to a close. Before Christian 
labor was begun among them, the Eskimos were 
accounted peculiarly treacherous and supersti- 
tious. As elsewhere, they were ruled by sor- 
cerers, called Angekoks. Their whole character 
seemed in keeping with the aspect of the 
country, grim and repulsive. While the climate 
of Labrador is more inclement than that of 
Lower Greenland, the people were, if possible, 
more degraded. Their dwellings and habits no 
less filthy, their features, color, dress, amulets 
and superstitions the same, they have less sim- 
plicity, but more pride and arrogance, than their 
neighbors on the opposite side of Davis Strait. 
The youth who has shot a few ptarmigans is a 
great man; he becomes vastly supercilious and 
boastful. Nowhere else on the surface of our 
globe is a larger share of time and strength 
required to secure the bare means of livelihood. 
Ground that is frozen nine or more months of 
the year can yield no staple for food, nor are 
tame animals reared for that purpose. The 
dogs, wolf-like in shape, never bark, but only 
howl. They are exceedingly quarrelsome, yet 
will travel two days without food. Nine dogs 
have been known to draw a weight of sixteen 



lect.vi.] PREVIOUS NEGLECT. 221 

hundred pounds the distance of a mile in ten 
minutes. When one of them receives a lash, he 
bites his neighbor, and so the bite goes round 
— a habit somewhat human. 

Now, though a Christian mission should be 
established among this people, the necessities 
of their occupation will keep them awaj^ from 
the stations, and their children away from school 
for months every year. Is there any hope for 
a people thus situated and so debased? Will 
not Holy Scripture and the Holy Spirit find 
in that sunken race material beyond the power 
of renovation? Does not such a frightful region 
lie outside the scope of Christ's command, " Go 
teach all nations " ? 

Heaven would not be complete without con- 
verted Eskimos from Labrador. True, since the 
discovery of their land, they had remained for 
nearly three centuries wholly neglected. And, so 
far as known, they were despised by European 
visitors; were deemed scarcely human, a refuse 
race, as little to be cared for as their cheerless 
coast was to be visited. For one hundred years, 
the Hudson's Bay Company, though composed 
of men nominally Christians, had held possession, 
without lifting a finger toward evangelizing na- 
tives on the shores of the Atlantic, or at their 
posts on interior waters. The extraordinary 
charter granted by Charles II of England (1669) 
to that company, with such sweeping privileges, 



222 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

conferring "on them exclusively all the lands 
in Hudson's Bay, together with all the trade 
thereof, and all others which they should ac- 
quire,*' with a subordinate sovereignty by an 
absolute proprietorship and commercial suprem- 
acjs remained in force till 1863. They employ 
twelve hundred men, and have one hundred 
and fifty settlements — a long chain of forts and 
factories extending from the coast of Labrador 
to the Pacific, and from the northern boundary 
of Canada to the Arctic Ocean. But it was 
reserved for another nationality, and for men 
of other training, first to put forth Christian 
effort in behalf of the Eskimo. The severe school 
of Greenland furnished pioneers. 

The earliest attempt in this line was made 
by John Christian Ehrhardt, a Moravian pilot, 
from Holland. When visiting St. Thomas, in 
the West Indies, as a sailor, he had been con- 
verted (1741) through the instrumentality of 
Frederick Martin, the excellent Moravian mis- 
sionary laboring there. Afterwards he went out 
on northern voyages; visited New Herrnhut, in 
Greenland; and had a strong desire awakened 
to carry the gospel to tribes of whom he heard, 
further south. Writing to Bishop von Watte- 
ville (1750), he says: "I have also an amazing 
affection for those northern countries, for Indians 
and other barbarians ; and it would be the source 
of the greatest joy if the Saviour would discover 



LECT. VI.] 



EHRHAEDT. 223 



to me that he has chosen me, and would make 
me fit, for this service. . . . Whoever has seen 
our cause in Greenland and what the Saviour 
has done to the poor heathen there, surely his 
heart and his eyes must overflow with tears of 
joy, if he possess any feeling of interest in the 
happiness of others ; they are, indeed, sparkling 
rubies in the golden girdle of our Saviour." 
Von Watteville encouraged the Arctic seaman 
who carried so warm a heart, but the Hudson's 
Bay Company refused permission to have the 
gospel preached to savages in the neighborhood 
of their factories. English merchants, however, 
sent a vessel for trade to Labrador, and made 
Ehrhardt supercargo. With him was associated 
a party of four Moravian missionaries, who vol- 
unteered to be left on the coast. The Hope — 
for the vessel bore the same auspicious name 
as did that which carried Egede to Greenland — 
touched at a point on the southeastern coast in 
July, 1752. The natives were gratified to find 
that Ehrhardt understood their language, which 
differs from that of Greenland Eskimos only as 
a dialect, the difference being less than between 
High and Low German. The Brethren set up 
the house which they had taken out from Eng- 
land, and, with characteristic buoyancy of antici- 
pation, named the place Hoffenthal (Hopedale). 
Ehrhardt, after receiving their farewell letters for 
Europe, took prayerful leave, and sailed up the 



224 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

coast to complete a cargo ; but, within less than 
two weeks from his departure, the Brethren 
were surprised to see the Hope reenter their 
harbor. Ehrhardt, accompanied by the captain 
and five sailors, had landed with merchandise 
on the coast to the north, but did not return 
to his ship. They were probably murdered. 
There was no second boat for the rest of the 
crew to go in search of their comrades ; and, 
after waiting a while in distressing anxiety, they 
sailed back to Hoffenthal. The mate, now short 
of hands, implored the missionaries to assist in 
navigating the ship to England ; and thus closed 
the first endeavor to Christianize Labrador, with 
a melancholy resemblance to the fate of the 
heroic Captain Gardiner, who made the earliest 
attempt to Christianize Antarctic regions. 

The second attempt was made by Jens Haven, 
of Danish birth, a Moravian carpenter, and who, 
instead of being deterred, was drawn toward 
that land of savages by the alarming fate of 
Ehrhardt. Any man loyal to his country, or 
loyal to the kingdom of Christ, will be stimu- 
lated by the martyrdom of others. We shall 
presently have occasion to notice the untimely 
loss of two members of this Labrador mission. 
Did their sad end deter others from the service ? 
Listen to a statement of Samuel Liebisch, one 
of their successors: " Toward the end of the 
year 1774," he says, "I was deeply affected by 



lect.vi.] JENS HAVEN. 225 

the painful intelligence of the shipwreck and 
death of the Brethren Brasen and Lehman, off 
the coast of Labrador. This catastrophe sug- 
gested the serious question to my mind, whether 
I should be willing to engage in my Saviour's 
service even at the peril of my life, and to 
take Brother Brasen's place if it were required 
of me. I was enabled to answer this heart- 
searching question in the affirmative, with full 
confidence and assurance of faith." 1 So has it 
often been. When Colman falls in Burmah, the 
zeal of Boardman and his wife is fired. The 
early death of Harriet Newell only rouses Harriet 
Winslow to follow her. Lyman and Munson 
perish by the hands of Battas, but Lowry is 
moved to offer himself for work in the East. 
When, in turn, he dies by the hands of pirates, 
many a heart is thrilled with a feeling the oppo- 
site of dread. 

For six years, Jens Haven had devoted his 
leisure to the study of those northern coasts 
of America ; he had longed and prayed that 
he might be sent to Labrador. Following Zin- 
zenclorf s advice, he went first to Greenland, that 
he might learn the language, and labored for 
several years at Lichtenfels. Finally, his origi- 
nal design was fulfilled. With letters of intro- 
duction to Sir Hugh Palisser, Governor of New- 

1 Periodical Accounts, XIX, 212. 
15 



226 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

foundland, lie sailed for that island ; was received 
with much kindness, and then, taking a French 
vessel, proceeded to Labrador (176-4). On the 
first landing of Haven, the natives desired him 
to accompany them to an island half an hour 
distant. Considering their character and what 
had been the fate of Ehrharclt, this naturally 
seemed a most hazardous venture. He says, 
however : " I confidently turned to the Lord 
in prayer, and thought within myself, 'I will 
go with them in thy name. If they kill me, my 
work on earth will be done, and I shall be 
with thee; but, if they spare my life, I shall 
firmly believe it to be thy will that they should 
hear and embrace the gospel.' I accordingly 
went; and, as soon as we arrived there, all set 
up a shout, ' Our friend is come ! ' " The next 
year, Haven revisits the same coast in company 
with two other Moravian Brethren, as well as 
Drachart, a Danish missionary, formerly in Green- 
land, now a Moravian. Hindrances, however, 
prevent the actual establishment of a mission till 
later. The Moravians had presented a petition 
to the Privy Council of England, and George III 
granted " one hundred acres of land on the 
coast of Labrador, wherever they pleased to 
locate themselves, for the purpose of evangeliz- 
ing the heathen inhabitants." The Brethren in 
London fitted out a vessel, and sent Haven, 
Drachart and others to the inhospitable region. 



lect. vi.] MIKAK. 227 

A clan unlike some of their race was found, 
which welcomed the expedition (1770). This 
reception was due in part to Mikak, a female 
who had been captured in a battle between 
European colonists and the Eskimos (1768), 
had been taken to England, in some measure * 
educated, and now, with her husband, was pre- 
pared to conciliate her countrymen to the new- 
comers. She presented herself in a white gar- 
ment, the gift of the Princess of Wales, decked 
with gold stars and lace, and in front a gold 
medallion containing a likeness of the King of 
England. During her exile in Great Britain, 
she had made representations in regard to the 
degraded condition of her countrymen, and had 
entreated Haven that he would return from 
England to Labrador with a view to do them 
good. That had influence originally in helping 
on the enterprise, as did the statements of the 
negro Anthony relative to slaves in the West 
Indies, before Moravian missionaries set out for 
St. Thomas. 

The next year, arrangements were made for 
establishing a permanent mission. Fifteen per- 
sons composed the company, Haven and Dra- 
chart being among them. Three of the Brethren 
were married ; eight of the party were laymen. 
To the place selected, a little above latitude 56° 
and about eighty miles north of Hopedale, they 
gave the name of Nain. Numbers of the natives 



228 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

settled temporarily near the spot, and attended 
upon preaching in the summer months, but, when 
winter came, would withdraw to different parts 
of the coast. A little insight into the experi- 
ences of the Brethren may be gathered from 
a leaf of Haven's journal of a visit to one of 
the native families : " We were forced to creep 
on all fours through a low passage, several 
fathoms long, to get into the house ; and were 
glad if we escaped being bitten by the hungry 
dogs, which take refuge there in cold weather, 
and which, as they lie in the dark, are often 
trodden upon by the visitor, who, if he escapes 
from this misfortune, is compelled to undergo 
the more disgusting salutation of being licked 
in the face by these animals, and of crawling 
through the filth in which they mingle. Yet 
this house, notwithstanding our senses of see- 
ing and smelling were most wofuily offended in 
such frightful weather, was of equal welcome 
to us as the greatest palace." Jens Haven and 
his associates, plain men, were taught of God, 
and they formed a Christian estimate of their 
degraded fellow-men. 

Previous endeavors of the Moravians to begin 
missionary work had proved, as we have seen, 
only exploring visits. This was the earliest 
successful establishment upon the rugged coast. 
An Order in Council had been issued (1774), 
giving to the Brethren a second tract of land, 



lect.vi.] JENS HAVEN. 229 

one hundred thousand acres in extent, for mis- 
sionary purposes, which tract, with the full ap- 
proval of the natives, was appropriated in the 
name of the King, and a second station com- 
menced on an island in the Bay of Okak, one 
hundred and fifty miles to the north of Nain 
(1776), at which latter place the first Eskimo 
convert in Labrador received baptism the same 
year. The indefatigable Haven, one among the 
pioneers of that movement also, declared that 
the first months at Okak were the happiest of 
his life ; for he had opportunity to preach Christ 
crucified, in some instances, four or five times 
a day, and to persons, for the most part, not 
reluctant to hear him. About the same dis- 
tance to the south of Nain was opened (1782) the 
third station, three hundred miles north from 
the Straits of Belisle, near the spot where the 
first unsuccessful attempt had been made ; and 
to it was given the original name, Hoffenthal. 
Owing to more intercourse with unprincipled 
European traders, the natives in that quarter 
were found less susceptible to Christianizing in- 
fluences than even those farther north. Here, 
too, the devoted Jens Haven spent two years in 
hard toil; but infirmities came upon him, and 
he was obliged to return to Europe (1784). The 
last six years of his life he was totally blind, 
but never ceased to be resigned and cheerful. 
In his seventy-second year (1796), he went to 



230 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.yi. 

his everlasting rest, leaving this memorandum 
on a slip of paper, which was found: "I wish 
the following to be added to the narrative of 
my life : ' On such a day, Jens Haven, a poor 
sinner, who in his own judgment deserves con- 
demnation, fell happily asleep, relying on the 
death and merits of Christ. 5 " 

The year eighteen hundred and thirty wit- 
nessed the establishment of a fourth station, 
called Hebron, one hundred miles to the north 
of Okak, the itiaterials for the mission buildings 
being taken out as usual from England. Still 
another enterprise of the same kind was started 
in 1865, the locality lying between Nain and 
Hoffenthal, and was called Zoar. The sixth 
and last station was founded at Ramah, sixty 
miles above Hebron, on the coast of Nullatartok 
Bay. Funds for this purpose were raised in 
England, and expressly with a view to the estab- 
lishment of a "Jubilee Station," in the year 1871, 
the centennial of the first permanent missionary 
foothold on the coast of Labrador. 

In carrying on this mission, which has now 
(1881) a history of a hundred and ten years, 
the Moravian Brethren have met with trials and 
discouragements peculiarly disheartening — the 
condition, character and habits of the natives, 
half the population of a settlement being absent 
for months ; the rigors of a climate which seems 
to protest vehemently against the presence of 



lect.vi.] EMBARRASSMENTS. 231 

man ; epidemics, such as influenza, whooping- 
cough, dysentery, erysipelas, occasionally carry- 
ing off one fifth or more of the Eskimos at a 
settlement, and calling for assiduous attention 
from missionaries. At other times, a distemper 
has swept away the beasts of burden — there 
is but one species, the dog — thus leaving the 
people greatly crippled in their search for means 
of subsistence. Seasons of famine have occurred. 
Like most others in so rude a state, the Eskimo 
is exceedingly improvident, living from hand to 
mouth, selling out all his stores to traders, eat- 
ing enormously when there is plenty, but mani- 
festing a childish unconcern about exigencies 
which are liable to come at any time. The 
winter of 1836-7, for instance, was characterized 
by extreme severity and destitution, when fam- 
ished natives were compelled to eat the skin 
coverings of their tents, to feed on boots and 
the like. At another period of distress (1851), 
the missionaries distributed seventy thousand 
dried fish among the destitute of Okak alone ; 
and, at that station, out of three hundred dogs 
only twenty survived. During another similar 
season (1855-6), several converts, being remote 
from any settlement, died of starvation. The 
introduction of ardent spirits, by outside fisher- 
men and traders, has exerted a demoralizing in- 
fluence ; and the same is true, in general, as 
respects their intercourse with foreigners, most 



232 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vi. 

of whom have had no regard to the highest wel- 
fare of this inferior and untutored race. Not 
less than a thousand vessels are engaged in the 
Labrador fisheries; other fleets are devoted to 
the pursuit of seals, which are caught chiefly 
by Newfoundlanders, to the annual value of a 
million and a half of dollars. Traders endeavor 
to detach the Eskimos from the missionaries' 
influence, in order to use them more entirely 
in the interest of a traffic which is often none 
too scrupulous. Gambling is one of the arts 
which civilized men have taught the natives. 

Upon first acquaintance, the Eskimos usually 
treated Europeans in an utterly contemptuous 
manner, calling them dogs and barbarians. Their 
gross, self-righteous stolidity was often a most 
discouraging feature ; as, when Drachart spoke 
of the depravity of mankind, they would admit 
that it might be true in regard to foreigners, 
but entirely inapplicable to themselves. When 
he told them how some of the Greenlanders had 
been washed in the Saviour's blood, their reply 
was : " They must have been extremely wicked 
to be in need of such a process." As he was 
discoursing on one occasion about Christ's great 
love in dying for us, an Eskimo remarked: 
"There is nothing wonderful in God's loving 
me, for I never killed a European ! *■ They could 
see no practical benefit from this new religion, 
which did not promise them any help in seal- 



lect.vi.] PEKSOKAL PERILS. 233 

fishing, or in building their kayaks. "We nei- 
ther hear nor understand what you say," was 
the reply of a heathen at Hebron (1848) ; 
" only give us an old pipe and some tobacco ; 
it is all we want/' That also they learned from 
foreigners, bearing the name of Christians. 1 

Peculiar trials incident to a region so far north 
are often encountered. In one instance, several 
Christian Eskimos were fishing on a mass of ice, 
which suddenly broke loose from the shore and 
moved out to sea. They had already taken eight 
seals, which served them as food, though un- 
cooked. Calling to mind Paul's shipwreck and 
deliverance, they appear to have had an unwa- 
vering trust in the Saviour's loving-kindness 
and his gracious might; and on the thirteenth 
day the floating mass was driven coastwise near 
enough to allow of their escape. Missionaries 
venturing once to the distance of forty miles, 
for a pastoral visit, in the month of February, 
though wrapped in furs, nearly perished ; their 
eyelids froze together so that they were obliged 

1 The claim that tobacco acts as a prophylactic was never 
so vividly illustrated as in the case of an Eskimo, who was 
walking alone on an island in the neighborhood of Nain, when 
he saw six wolves advancing rapidly toward him- He had 
no weapon of defense except his pipe, which he began to 
smoke most vigorously. Sparks fell from the bowl, and a 
cloud of smoke enveloped his person. The judicious wolves 
turned and ran in the opposite direction. Periodical Accounts, 
XXIX, 481. 



234 MOKAVIAtf MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

to keep pulling tliem open, their hands freezing 
the meantime and swelling like bladders. Three 
years after the settlement at Nain was begun 
(1774), a voyage of exploration to the north 
was undertaken with reference to establishing 
another station; but the missionaries suffered 
a fearful shipwreck, and two of them, Brasen 
and Lehman, were drowned. Samuel Liebisch and 
another missionary named Turner, having official 
occasion to visit Okak (1782), one hundred and 
fifty miles from Nain, started on the frozen sea, 
with three native men, one woman and a child. 
After a while, a ground-swell began ; grating and 
roaring were heard ; and fissures appeared in the 
undulating ice. As the sun declined and dark- 
ness came on, a storm arose ; snow was driven 
in whirlwinds; and, for leagues around, noises 
were heard like the report of a cannon, as the 
ice, many feet in thickness, began to burst. 
Their only hope now was in rapidly escaping to 
the shore ; but, when their sledges approached the 
land, the ice, already detached from the rocks, 
was forced up and down, grinding against preci- 
pices, and crumbling in pieces. Only with great- 
est difficulty could the frightened dogs, which 
drew the sledges, be urged to the shore at the 
right moment when the general mass was near- 
est on a level with the coast. Scarcely had they 
reached the land, when the vast frozen platform 
broke up, far as the e} r e could reach, and the 



lect. vi.] LITERATURE. 235 

surface of the sea became one wild area of tumult- 
uous waves and colliding ice-fields, with a roar 
like batteries of heavy ordnance. Extreme pri- 
vation and suffering followed. 1 

What, now, are some of the results of Moravian 
labor in Labrador ? From missionaries, a major- 
ity of whom are not above the grade of average 
mechanics, no great achievement can be looked 
for in the line of literature. 'With great labor, 
portions of Scripture and other religious matter 
have been translated into the native tongue, and 
printed at the expense of the British and Foreign 
Bible Society. In 1809, a small hymn-book and a 
few tracts were ready, which the converts, both in 
Greenland and Labrador, received with delight. 
One year later, a Harmony of the G-ospels was 
in readiness. Eighteen hundred and twenty-one, I 
the first jubilee of the mission, was signalized 
by the distribution of the entire New Testament 
in the vernacular. At once the poor people, 
without suggestion from any one, began to col- 
lect what they could, and forwarded the same 
to England as a thank-offering to the society 
which had bestowed so invaluable a treasure 
upon them. Gold and silver had they none, 
but such as they had they gave — one the fur 

1 There have been other forms of peril besides those men- 
tioned above. An evil-minded Eskimo, who had been called 
to account for stealing, fired twice at Missionary Eisner, each 
time with two balls, yet the good man escaped uninjured. 



236 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. vi 

of a cross-fox, and one a white-fox skin ; some 
a whole seal, some a half, some smaller pieces. 
They said : " We are indeed poor, but yet might 
now and then bring some blubber, as a contribu- 
tion, that others, who are as ignorant as we were 
formerly, may receive the same gospel which 
has been so sweet to our souls, and thereby be 
taught to find the way to Jesus and believe on 
him." When the mission's second jubilee (1871) 
came round, printed portions of the Old Testa- 
ment were distributed, and were received with 
deep gratitude. 

In regard to the work of conversion among 
Labrador Eskimos, it is to be noticed that the 
first instance occurred in England. This was of 
the youth Karpik, who had been carried to that 
country (1769) by Sir Hugh Palisser, and placed 
at the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, in York- 
shire. He came under the influence of Haven 
and Drachart, embraced Christianity, received 
baptism, and almost immediately expired. This 
occurred prior to the founding of the mission. 
He was the Henry Obookiah of Labrador — that 
Sandwich-Islander also having died, it will be 
recollected, a year before the American Board 
established a mission in Hawaii. At the outset, 
mistakes were made, and natives were sometimes 
admitted to the sacraments without being truly 
converted; yet there were pleasing instances of 
undoubted piety. One was Benjamin, who, in his 



lect.vi.] CONVERTS. 237 

last sickness (1803), would join with great fervor 
in such hymns as that of Zinzendorf, 

" The Saviour's blood and righteousness," 

and was all the while repeating appropriate texts 
of Scripture : " This is a faithful saying and 
worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came 
into the world to save sinners ; " " The blood of 
Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
Till his last breath, he continued to speak of the 
Saviour's love ; and, through all his sickness, the 
Eskimos who visited him were deeply affected by 
his Christian confidence and joy. 

Another was Frederick, a helper at Okak, who 
in his last illness could say to Missionary Barsoe : 
"I am a pilgrim and a stranger here below. 
As to the body, I am still on earth ; but as to 
the spirit, I am already in heaven. I pray daily 
to our Saviour that he would take me to him- 
self." Such manifestations, however, are not 
peculiar to the last sickness. Mention might 
be made of a man at the same station, who, 
striving earnestly to direct his course in accord- 
ance with God's Word, said: U I often think 
on rising in the morning, About this time my 
Saviour was for my sins crowned with thorns, 
mocked and scourged ; about noon I think, Now 
my Saviour was condemned to death ; and in 
the afternoon I remember his crucifixion and 
death, and the full redemption he wrought for 



238 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

me; and in these thoughts the time passes very 
quickly." r 

Speaking of one Sigsigak, the missionaries say : 
"From his infancy, he had wallowed in every 
kind of abomination, and was guilty of the most 
atrocious deeds. He had thus spent his life, and 
grown gray, in the service of Satan. But now 
how is he changed by the power of Jesus' blood, 
which cleanseth from all sin ! The ferocious and 
terrific countenance of this late monster of in- 
iquity, which made one tremble at his appearance, 
is converted into a mild, gentle aspect; the sav- 
age bear has become a gentle lamb ; and the 
slave and instrument of the Devil, a humble 
follower of the Good Shepherd, and a true child 
of God." After making profession of faith, in 
a fit of sudden anger he struck his wife ; but 
of his own accord he made confession, adding : 
"While I was in this passion, I felt a strong 
reproof in my heart, and it seemed to me as 
if I had struck Jesus himself in the face. I was 
powerfully convinced of the deep depravity of 
my soul, and that on account of my sins Jesus 
had been tormented and slain ; yea, that even I 
by my sins have slain him." The private record 
made by the pious Robert Adam, of Wintring- 
ham, comes to mind : " It was not only Pontius 
Pilate and the Jews, but my sins, I myself, that 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXVI, 173. 



lect.vi.] FEMALE CONVERTS. 239 

condemned Christ, that scourged him, and spit 
upon him, that drove the nails into his hands 
and feet, and pierced his side, and forced him 
to cry out, 'My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?"' 1 — a sentiment which is the bur- 
den of a hymn by Bonar : 

"Twas I that shed the sacred blood; 
I nailed him to the tree ; 
I crucified the Christ of God, 
I joined the mockery/' 

How is it with Eskimo women ? They, too, have 
shown the transforming power of God's grace. 
One was a widow, named Esther, who died 1792. 
On a visit at Nain, in childhood, she heard of 
Jesus, and never lost the impression then made. 
She would retire to a secluded spot on the hill 
near her birthplace, and pour out her heart in 
prayer to the Friend in heaven whose name she 
had learned. After many sufferings and trials, 
she found at Okak full rest to the soul, and 
was the first Eskimo who kept her profession 
unblemished to the end. Another, called Ajai- 
nak, being asked if she did not wish to become 
a candidate for baptism, replied : "I do some- 
times think about it, but more about my being 
so very great a sinner ; and I cry with tears to 
Jesus that he would forgive me my sins, and 
grant me to know him as my Saviour. I feel I 

1 Private Thoughts, p. 13. 



240 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

am unholy and unclean, and cannot thus belong 
to Jesus ; what would it, therefore, avail if I were 
a candidate for baptism and did not know him, 
and that he has forgiven my sins? . . . God is 
my Father," she would often say; "wherever I 
am, he is with me, and I can tell him all my 
wants." Another: "I am as one walking upon 
a smooth sheet of ice, and obliged with every 
step to guard against falling. He must uphold 
me, and my heart is lifted up in prayer to Him." 
The day following a sacramental service, at which 
deep emotion was manifested, certain communi- 
cants came to the missionary, one of whom, Sarah, 
brought all the metal rings with which she had 
adorned her fingers, and wished to part with 
them. When asked the reason, she answered: 
"I will have nothing now to please me but only 
Jesus." Lydia, Louisa, and some others followed 
with their ornaments, and entirely of their own 
accord, the missionaries having offered no criti- 
cism upon their dresSc And at Hopedale (1861) 
is the widow Sophia, seventy years old, who has 
lost the use of her feet ; she crawls on hands and 
knees, yet is always cheerful, rejoicing in the 
Lord, and, though so infirm, cares faithfully for 
another widow, who is more helpless than her- 
self. 1 

"Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXIV, 265. 



lect.vi.] KEVIVALS. 241 

believed on him ? " The very first instance of 
baptism in Labrador was that of an Angekok, 
Kingsmenguse (1776). Other sorcerers were also 
brought in. One such noted case (1848), was 
that of an old man, named Parksaut, the very 
Elymas of a neighborhood given up to all man- 
ner of dark deeds, and his hands stained with 
the blood of many a murder. To the surprise 
of all, he made his appearance at Hebron — fol- 
lowed afterwards by others to the number of 
eighty or more — avowed his purpose of turning 
to the Lord ; and the result justified his pro- 
fession. 

The Eskimos, reserved, phlegmatic and with 
blunted sensibilities, are perhaps the last people 
among whom we should look for a religious 
revival; yet this Labrador mission has enjoyed 
seasons of spiritual quickening. One of the 
earliest and most clearly defined was at Hoffen- 
thal, where declension had been previously more 
marked than in the other settlements, where, 
indeed, affairs had become so discouraging that, 
even thirty-three years after the commencement 
of labor there, thoughts of abandoning the sta- 
tion were entertained. The similar season of 
gracious visitation among the Indians at Cros- 
weeksung, during the labors of David Brainerd, 
was equally unlocked for. 1 As Kohlmeister was 

1 Edwards, X, 235. 
16 



242 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. vi. 

preaching (1804) from the words, "The Son of 
man came to seek and to save that which 
was lost," truth touched the heart of a wretched 
creature so degraded, so sunk in vice, as to be 
shunned by her own countrywomen. " I am the 
very worst of all," she exclaimed ; " but, if He 
came to seek the lost, even I can be saved." She 
fled earnestly to the Saviour, became a new crea- 
ture in Christ Jesus, and could testify: "I felt 
a singular joy and delight in my soul, and could 
not help weeping so much that I forgot myself, 
and remained sitting in church. My heart has 
ever since been fixed upon our Saviour alone, 
and I often weep for him. Now I know truly 
what you mean by feeling our Saviour near and 
precious to the soul, and experiencing his great 
love to sinners; and that it is not enough to be 
baptized, and to enjoy other privileges in the 
congregation, but that every one ought to be able 
to say for himself, 6 My Saviour is mine ; he died 
for my sins ; he has also taken away my sins, and 
received me even as his child.' ' In every hut, 
there might be heard the voice of prayer and 
praise ; places of worship were thronged ; and 
nearly all the adults began to seek after God. 
Some of the children, too, were awakened ; they 
met and sang hymns, during which they often 
burst into loud weeping. 

In the midst of this revival, two young men 
from Nam arrived at Hoffenthal. One of them 



tECT.vi.] REVIVALS. 243 

came to return his wife to her mother, in order 
to marry another more inclined to join him in 
heathen abominations. Christian friends gath- 
ered around him; his own mother exclaiming, 
" O my Lord Jesus, behold this my child ! I now 
give him up to thee. Oh, accept of him and 
suffer him not to be lost forever ! " He was con- 
victed of sin; his heart was changed; he took 
back his repudiated wife ; and the 3 r oung man 
who accompanied him also became a Christian. 
Missionaries afterwards wrote concerning this 
station : " The people have now, both in the 
morning and at evening, prayer and singing in 
all the families; and, both then and on other 
occasions, they edify each other in a manner that 
moves us to tears of gratitude. In short, there 
is at present a small congregation of believing 
Eskimos at Hopedale, blooming like a beautiful 
rose ; and, as all their happiness is founded upon 
the enjoyment of the merits of Christ, and in 
contemplating him as their crucified Redeemer, 
our joy is no more mixed with the fear and 
anxiety we felt formerly; but we rejoice in truth 
over a genuine work of God," The spiritual 
movement, begun at Hoffenthal, extended to 
Nain and to Okak (1805). That persons consti- 
tutionally so shj and reticent as the Eskimos 
should become ready to confess their sins, and 
to speak of the love of God shed abroad in 
their hearts, could not fail to surprise their coun- 



244 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.vi. 

trymen and to delight the missionaries. This 
season marked a new era in the history of the 
mission ; the happy influences continued to be 
felt sensibly for years. Nor is it unworthy of 
notice that this blessed visitation followed, in 
point of time, immediately upon that season of 
refreshing from on high (1798-1803), during 
which not less than one hundred and fifty 
churches in New England enjoyed revivals. 

At the present time (1881), the number of 
stations, six, is the same as in Greenland, though 
the missionary agents are twice as numerous — 
thirty-nine against nineteen. On the other hand, 
the members are fewer ; there being four hundred 
and ninety, while there are one thousand three 
hundred and two persons in charge. Along 
the coast, and a little in the interior, there are 
altogether about fifteen hundred Eskimos now 
under the influence of that mission. To the 
north of Hebron, there still remain a few heathen 
Eskimos, some of whom have been reported as 
being fierce and bloodthirsty. It was said that 
a man living at Ungava Bay murdered and de- 
voured seven human beings in one year (1863). 
To the south of Hoffenthal are a few more, the 
women having chiefly intermarried with fishermen 
of various nationalities ; but the people as a body 
have become Christian. At Zoar, the last heathen 
of that neighborhood received baptism in 1867. 
A species of home missionary work has been begun 



lect.vio STATISTICS AND RESULTS. 245 

among white settlers living in the southern part 
of the land, where half-breeds are able to read 
and write, the reason being that the mothers, 
on whom instruction devolves, have been taught 
in Moravian schools. 

The antecedents of this people were most un- 
promising, their surroundings are peculiarly dis- 
heartening, and, by the necessities of their con- 
dition, high social advancement is precluded. 
Position dooms them inexorably to the level of 
a low civilization ; and yet, unstable, weak, rude, 
though they are, Christianity has effected a vast 
change among them. It is of comparatively 
small moment that the original Eskimo huts, 
with windows of ice-slabs or seal-bladder, have 
given place to houses with glass windows, an 
iron stove in the middle, and blankets instead 
of reindeer-skins for the bed; that the people 
have developed a creditable taste for music, learn- 
ing tunes readily, many of the women and chil- 
dren possessing sweet voices ; that the Eskimos 
succeed as draughtsmen, while our Indians draw 
like children, and Polynesians do not draw at 
all. Moral elevation is the main thing. At 
Okak, there is an Orphan Asylum. The Week 
of Prayer is now observed at all the stations. 
Schools kept by missionaries are maintained at 
each station, and all that could reasonably be 
expected has been accomplished. 

Even the next year after labor was begun at 



246 MOB AVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

Nain (1772), sailors on board the missionary ship 
Amity were so impressed by the improvement in 
the behavior of the Eskimos as to exclaim : " They 
do not look like the old robbers and murderers ; 
they have become good sheep already." Lieuten- 
ant Curtis, who was sent out by Commodore Shuld- 
ham, from Newfoundland, to view the Brethren's 
settlement, acknowledged that, though he started 
with strong prejudices against the missionaries, 
he was greatly surprised at the improvement of 
the natives, and made a highly favorable report 
of the undertaking. That occurred at an early 
stage of the mission. Half a century afterward 
(1821), a British man-of-war anchored in the 
harbor of Nain, the captain, Sir William Martin, 
having been instructed by the Governor of New- 
foundland to investigate the work of Moravian 
missionaries in Labrador. So favorably impressed 
was Sir William by the deportment of the Chris- 
tian Eskimos, that the same ship returned the 
following year with an autograph letter from 
the Governor, couched in most friendly terms. 
Still more recently (1849), the boat's crew of a 
ship belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, 
which had been lost in the ice, was driven by 
the wind among the islands near Okak. They 
expected a cruel death from the Eskimos, who 
came off in their kayaks. But the nine emaciated 
men, to their surprise, were welcomed, and kindly 
taken on shore. Being unable, after their journey 



lect.vi.] STATISTICS AND RESULTS. 247 

of eight hundred miles in a boat, to walk, they 
were carried to the mission-house and tenderly 
cared for. They found native women singing 
Christian hymns at their work, and glad to pre- 
pare for them such food as was on hand. These 
servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, who 
owed their preservation to missionary influence, 
were compelled to acknowledge the good results 
with tears of joy. Similar instances have oc- 
curred elsewhere. A New England whale-ship 
was once wrecked in the Pacific Ocean. Her 
commander, who had been second mate of a 
ship that foundered there some years before, 
recognized a neighboring island as one where 
he had seen a boat's company fall into the hands 
of cannibals. . He and his comrades are, however, 
too exhausted and emaciated to attempt escape. 
They creep tremblingly to the top of a hill ; the 
foremost one suddenly springs to his feet, claps 
his hands, and shouts : " Safe ! safe ! safe ! " He 
has discovered a church in the midst of native 
huts ; a kind hospitality awaits them. 1 Mission- 
ary pioneers are preparing the way for similar 
surprises all round the world. 2 



1 Pres. For. Miss., 1853, p. 197. 

2 It can hardly be necessary to state that the interesting 
Labrador mission, established a few years since on Caribou 
Island, and still conducted by Rev. S. P. Butler, of Northamp- 
ton, in this State — Bonne Esperance being now the headquar- 
ters — has an entirely different field. Mr. Charles C. Carpenter, 



248 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

The present and the preceding lecture have 
contemplated subarctic evangelization as carried 
on by Moravians in Labrador and Greenland, two 
fields most uninviting to one who walks only 
by sight. The rigors of climate and the absence 
of outward attractiveness need not be further 
dwelt upon ; but we would never forget that the 
very frost-smoke, which to those unacquainted 
might suggest a rising temperature, singes the 
skin of one's face and hands as effectively as fire 
itself; that, if anything will banish romance from 
missionary life, it is to find, as a young Moravian 
lady found, one year ago (April, 1880), on land- 
ing in Greenland, that her first step ashore was 
into snow up to the knee ; that a preacher in the 
midst of his sermon is liable to see the lamp go 

having made a trip to that quarter on account of his health 
(1856), opened a correspondence with the late Dr. Wilkes, of 
Montreal, through which the Canadian Foreign Missionary Soci- 
ety became interested in the religious condition of the fishermen 
— English, French and American — living on the northern coast 
of the Gulf of St Lawrence, or visiting those waters. Subse- 
quently (18G6), Mr. Carpenter was ordained as missionary, and, 
with Mr. Clary and Miss Brodie, began Christian work on the 
island just named. The locality and the people are widely 
remote from the sphere of Moravian labors. This mission is 
now under the care of the " Ladies' Committee of Zion Church, 
Montreal." The English " Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel " has two or three stations in the same region and among 
the same class of persons. Eskimos, so far as they can be found 
in those parts, are mere stragglers. Some of the settlers have 
married Eskimo wives. The Methodists of Newfoundland also 
have attempted something in that quarter. 



lkct.vi] HINDRANCES. 249 

out because the oil has congealed — the thermom- 
eter indicating twenty, thirty, or more degrees 
below zero — and that sometimes numbers of his 
flock are in such straits as compel them to feed 
on seaweed and shell-fish, or to eat their own 
tent-skins. 

Other drawbacks exist. For a long time past, 
there has been little love lost on the Continent 
of Europe between Germans and Danes. It is 
not strange, then, that national prejudice should 
manifest itself on the frigid border of Greenland, 
where one of the nationalities is so in the ascend- 
ancy, as to number and resources, besides rep- 
resenting the home government, which has a 
monopoly of trade, but has not a monopoly of 
evangelistic zeal. The Moravians appear to have 
carried themselves very discreetly and submis- 
sively, but have all along been reminded that 
they are aliens. For instance, there came at one 
time (1856) an injunction from the Danish Board 
of Trade, forbidding the missionaries at Lichtenau 
and Friedrichsthal to receive as inhabitants any 
heathen from the eastern coast who might apply 
for that privilege ; also prohibiting re-admission 
to any families who might leave those settle- 
ments, and afterwards apply to be received again. 
All the heathen were to be directed to Danish 
stations. This was a selfish scheme for system- 
atically withdrawing natives from the Moravians. 
The missionaries submitted, though with a sor- 



250 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vi. 

rowful heart; but the iniquitous rescript was 
afterwards revoked. A few years ago, there were 
some connected with the colonial administration 
who advocated the expulsion of Moravian mis- 
sionaries from Greenland. Danish publications 
have decried Moravian labors, and have pro- 
nounced the translation of the Scriptures into 
Greenlandic a useless pastime. So, too, in Labra- 
dor, servants of the Hudson's Bay Company and 
foreign fishermen have often been a great hin- 
drance, especially by immoral practices. 

In both countries, there may have been a slight 
mistake, on the part of missionaries, respecting 
the amount of charitable aid afforded to natives. 
If so, it was participation in a mistake only too 
common elsewhere. Few points in evangelistic 
policy require more discriminating caution, or oft- 
ener a wise reserve, than that of secular assist- 
ance. One of the early lessons to be inculcated 
is the duty of self-help till it reach self-support, 
and then pass on to efforts in behalf of the un- 
evangelized elsewhere. Otherwise Christian char- 
acter will be like a flaccid muscle, and pupilage 
will be prolonged, if not perpetuated. Hardly 
anything is more detrimental to religious growth 
than contentment in some needless eleemosynary 
habit. The Eskimos, in common with all untu- 
tored tribes, know little about self-restraint and 
wise forethought. The presence of European 
traders is attended by injurious consequences i for 



lect.vi.] HINDRANCES. 251 

thereby a damaging fondness for articles, which 
to them are mere luxuries, is fostered. Take the 
single one of coffee, and take a single illustration : 
A Greenlander, not long since, carried his supply 
of blubber to a Danish tradesman, and brought 
home, with other articles, seven pounds of coffee. 
He at once invited his friends to a repast; and, 
though the number was not large, they made an 
end of the whole seven pounds at one sitting. In 
consequence of an adoption, though partial, of 
European food and dress, together with other 
circumstances, the native constitution is becom- 
ing enfeebled. 1 Obtaining credit operates badly, 
of course ; and, in general, the more intercourse 
with foreigners, the worse off- the Greenlanders. 
Far better would it have been for them if, in 
becoming civilized Christians, they had not pro- 
portionally ceased to be Eskimos in their style 
of living. Their improvement is unequal ; is not 
well-balanced. With all the advancements made 
in some directions, culinary practices are not yet 
quite what one might wish. For example, you 
may see a woman chew a piece of bacon for a 
while, and then put it into the frying-pan for the 
general benefit. 

There has been, there still is, want of compe- 
tent native helpers. Probably the Brethren, like 

1 Few Eskimos now live to the age of fifty; a man of sixty 
is very seldom met with. Women live longer than men, and 
widows are numerous. 



252 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vi. 

many other missionaries, have been somewhat 
remiss in bringing forward men to be catechists 
and pastors. Unpromising and unsatisfactory as 
is the material, still it doubtless would have been 
well if, with all attendant risks, such auxiliaries 
had, at an earlier daj^ had the beneficial discipline 
of more responsibility put upon them, and of 
greater trust reposed in them. Not till 1850 was 
an institution for training native assistants estab- 
lished ; it opened at Lichtenau, with six pupils, 
one of them, Simeon, a descendant of Kaiarnak, the 
first convert. A course of study for six winters 
was marked out. But the pupils have to earn their 
own livelihood by the customary Greenland call- 
ings — callings which differ a good deal from 
methods of self-support among our theological 
students — and do not have opportunity for very 
complete ministerial equipment. Relatively, how- 
ever, it is sufficient. This school is for the South- 
ern District; a like seminary for the Northern 
District was opened at New Herrnhut in 1866, 
with four pupils. 

Coming, as we have so recently in our series 
of visits, from the Caribbean Sea, we can hardly 
avoid noting certain contrasts. I do not now 
refer to the extreme dissimilarity of physical fea- 
tures, but to a difference in one or two condi- 
tions of missionary experience. While a dis- 
heartening mortality has prevailed among mission- 
aries in the American tropical missions, in these 



lect.vi.j THE MISSIONARIES. 253 

northern regions there has been a very gratifying 
longevity. Of Brethren employed in Greenland 

— between sixty and seventy in number, during 
the first century — Frederick Bonisch labored for 
thirty years ; six others were thus occupied from 
forty to fifty years each, and one for fifty-two 
years. In Labrador also there have been some 
prolonged terms of service. 1 We must linger 
a moment on one or two names. There was 
George Kmoch, belonging by birth to the Sclavic 
(Wendish) race, a plain man, who passed through 
various spiritual conflicts, had a strong impulse 
to offer himself for the missionary service, and 
spent thirty-four years in Labrador. He died 
in England (1857), aged eighty-seven, one year 
older than John Eliot, his last words being nearly 
the same with those of the apostle to the Indians 

— " Welcome ! welcome ! " Another among those 
self-denying men connected with the mission, was 
Benjamin Gottlieb Kohlmeister. After repeated 
solicitations, he began, at eighty-three, a written 
sketch of his life — the same age as that of Lord 
Brougham when he commenced a similar record. 
He was of Polish birth, but belonged to a reli- 
gious Protestant family of humble circumstances. 
Such was his love for the Holy Scriptures in 
childhood, that, when a fire broke out on a street 



1 One of the female missionaries lived to be nearly 81 ; she 
died in 1851. 



254 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

where they were living at Warsaw, instead of 
caring for clothes or trinkets, he seized the large 
family Bible, and, though hardly able to lift it, 
carried the treasure beyond the reach of danger. 
While yet a youth, he came under deep convic- 
tion of sin, and despairingly groaned — using the 
same words as Samuel J. Mills in similar circum- 
stances — " Oh that I had never been born ! " 
At Herrnhut, he became a devout man, labored 
thirty-four years in Labrador, grateful for such 
a privilege; and died in Silesia (1874), having 
reached his eighty-ninth year. What greater con- 
trast could there be than between the social 
condition and life of Benjamin Kohlmeister, the 
Moravian mechanic, always poor, never conspicu- 
ous, spending his best days in such a bleak, 
unfrequented region, and a contemporary of his, 
Prince Talleyrand, a millionaire, on whom highest 
honors were lavished, the companion and coun- 
selor of kings ! There is only one greater con- 
trast. They were at a yet wider remove in 
character and disposition. At eighty-three, look- 
ing back upon his missionary experience, Kohl- 
meister writes : " That the Lord has counted me, 
one of the poorest of his children, worthy to 
serve him in weakness, amongst the heathen, is 
a favor for which I hope to praise him through 
eternity." Talleyrand, born about the same time, 
penned these words: "Behold, eighty-three years 
have passed away ! What cares ! What agitations ! 



lect.vi.] MISSIONARY NAVIGATION. 255 

What anxieties ! What ill-will ! What sad compli- 
cations ! And all without other result except great 
fatigue of body and mind, a profound sentiment of 
discouragement for the future, and disgust of the 
past!" Cheerfulness — yea, joy in the Lord — has 
characterized this whole body of Brethren during 
their long and dreary confinement in the great 
prison of ice and snow. No privations or hard- 
ships are severe enough to make them complain. 
In their love to the Saviour and to the souls 
of men, they speak even regarding a year of 
famine, or of great distress in any form, as " this 
happy year." 

Reverting to navigation in equatorial and in 
northern waters, we notice a contrast. I do not 
ask you to review the middle passage of the 
slave-ships, nor to linger upon atrocities of West- 
Indian buccaneers ; but I must bespeak your 
attention to the sea-experience of Moravians in 
their hyperborean enterprises. It was indispensa- 
ble, from the first, that supplies should be fur- 
nished to the Brethren in Labrador at least once 
a year; and it was desirable that barter with 
the natives should be carried on through them 
— the oil, fish and furs of the country being 
exchanged for something more valuable than 
beads and other baubles, of which the Eskimos 
are fond. The expense of that mission has thus, 
to a considerable extent, been met. It is for the 
spiritual as well as temporal good of the natives 



256 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

that this trade should be in the hands of Mora- 
vians ; industry is thus stimulated. The " Ship's 
Company," so called, undertook at the outset to 
secure a packet, and continued to do so till 1797, 
when the English " Society for the Furtherance 
of the Gospel" — which was started in London 
(1741) by Spangenberg, resuscitated in 1764, 
and still engaged in its good work — became 
responsible for this as well as for other items of 
outlay. 

Only one voyage of the Moravian ship from 
London to Labrador and back is undertaken an- 
nually. The journals of missionaries show that 
these trips have been attended by the fiercest 
storms and the most imminent perils. Even at 
a favorable season of the year, drift-ice sometimes 
extends full two hundred miles from the land 
outward. One summer (1816), it was found im- 
possible for the ship to reach Hoffenthal; the 
next season she was held fast four weeks in 
the ice, and, at another time (1853), was able to 
reach only one of the four stations. Most sig- 
nally has the preserving hand of Providence 
been interposed now for more than a century. 
Admiral Lord Gambier, Lieutenant-Governor of 
Newfoundland, and well acquainted with navi- 
gation in the North Atlantic, remarked repeat- 
edly, that he considered the preservation of the 
Labrador ship during so long a course of years 
as the most remarkable occurrence in maritime 



lect.vi.] THE HAEMONY. 257 

history. This had become so well recognized 
that the Society's vessel is insured by the under- 
writers at Lloyds', year after year, at a premium 
considerably less than what is charged for vessels 
bound to other portions of British North America, 
including the territory of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. It is gratifying to light upon the record 
of a safe-conduct given to " The Grood Intent, 
Captain Francis Mugford, Master," signed at 
Passy, 1779, by " Benjamin Franklin, Minister 
Plenipotentiary from the United States at the 
Court of France." 

No magnificent packet-ship, no man-of-war be- 
longing to the British navy that I have had 
opportunity to visit, ever interested me so much 
as the Harmon]/ — the fourth Moravian packet 
which has borne that name — then lying at the 
East-Indian dock in London. Her voyage last 
year (1881) was the one hundred and twelfth in 
the series. Her preservation for so long a time, 
and in the midst of such exceptional exposures, 
will appear all the more remarkable when it is 
remembered that, in the course of 1881, more 
than two thousand (2,039) shipwrecks occurred 
throughout the world, involving a loss of more 
than four thousand (4,134) lives, and an esti- 
mated property loss of more than a billion of 
dollars (11,400,000,000). Not the size or build 
of the good ship Harmony, but her service, is her 
charm. She is the living link between warm 

17 



258 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

hearts in England and humble Christian exiles 
in Labrador. The figure-head represents an angel 
with a trumpet, and the scroll bears the words, 
" Glory to God : Peace on earth." At the cen- 
tenary (1841) of the " Society for the Furtherance 
of the Gospel," to which the Harmony belongs, 
James Montgomery, the Moravian poet, sang : x 

" Thither, while to and fro she steers, 

Still guide our annual bark, 
By night and day, through hopes and fears, 

While lonely is the Ark ; 
Along her single track she braves 
Gulfs, whirlpools, icebergs, winds and waves, 

To waft glad tidings to the shore 

Of longing Labrador. 



1 The Moravian vessels, nine in all thus far, and having had 
seven captains, have been known under different names; as, 
Jersey Packet, The Amity, The Good Intent, The Resolution, and 
The Harmony, which last has been borne by four. During times 
of war between England and France, one after another of the 
vessels has been exposed to privateers. We are reminded of 
the capture of the first ship of the London Missionary Society, 
the Duff, by a French privateer (1800) ; and of the succession 
of vessels owned by that Society, The Haweis, The Endeavor, 
The Messenger of Peace, The Camden, and, last and largest of 
all, one having a memorable history and bearing a memorable 
name, The John Williams. Nor do we forget The Southern Cross 
in the service of the " Society for the Propagation of the 
Gospel," nor yet the Morning Star, which, on first arriving 
at Honolulu, was greeted with a procession of two thousand 
children, and with religious services and festivities. See Mis- 
sionary Ships Connected with the London Missionary Society. By 
E. Prout. London, 1865. Story of the Morning Star. By Hiram 
Bingham, Jr. Boston, 1866. 



lect.vi.1 THE ESKIMO FUTURE. 259 

" How welcome to the watcher's eye, 

From morn till even fixed, 
The first faint speck that shows her nigh, 

Where surge and sky are mixed ! 
Till, looming large and larger yet, 
With bounding prow and sails full set, 

She speeds to anchor on the shore 

Of joyful Labrador." 

But we must not leave these high latitudes 
without first glancing at their missionary future. 
Upon first thought, it seems somewhat like the 
prospect from one of those ice-hills far on toward 
the Polar Ocean, rugged and dreary. Disease 
now and then decimates the population ; ardent 
spirits supplement the deadly work. Two hun- 
dred years ago, there may have been thirty thou- 
sand Eskimos in Greenland alone ; there are now 
not more than one third of that number. While, 
with the exception of a few heathen on the south- 
eastern coast, they have become a nominally 
Christian people, as is the case in Labrador, their 
religious character is not stalwart. Few of them 
have any adequate ideas in regard to the training 
of children ; many of them show a sad indiffer- 
ence to divine things. Too many of them seem 
to think that, if one meets death without alarm — 
whether such quietude results from medicine or 
disease or otherwise — it must be well with him 
hereafter. But is that a Polar peculiarity? You 
may today hear pious Eskimos giving thanks to 
God for the supplies of his providence and grace . 



260 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi. 

" We have no want ; our lamps burn ; we are not 
yet extinguished." With all that is dreary in the 
long Arctic night of the past, there may now be 
seen a beautiful ice-blink in the moral firmament 
of the North — the blink a peculiar brightness 
which assumes an arch-like form — through which 
is opened a vista into Paradise. Eskimo barbar- 
ism is a thing of the past ; ferocity and violence 
are no longer to be feared. Less than a century 
and a half ago (1740), a Dutch brig was seized 
by the natives at the port of Disco, and the whole 
crew murdered. Two years later, the seamen of 
another vessel, that had stranded, met with the 
same fate. But for the last hundred years — so 
Dr. Kane affirms — " Greenland has been safer 
for the wrecked mariner than many parts of our 
coast ; hospitality is the universal characteristic." 
Time was (1763) when Eskimo pirates, on the 
Labrador coast also, so infested the Straits of 
Belisle that it was unsafe for a fishing-vessel 
to enter singly, and no European would dare to 
pass a night among the natives. Now, how 
changed ! And how much does Arctic naviga- 
tion owe to Arctic evangelization ! Theft is rare ; 
lock or bolt is not needed. Formerly the Eski- 
mos practiced the greatest cruelties upon their 
own kindred who became dependent; the aged, 
the infirm and widows being often put to death. 
Now a magazine is opened, in which the once 
hard-hearted and still improvident natives are 



lect. vi.] THE ESKIMO FUTURE. 261 

encouraged to deposit their superfluous stores, 
and to devote one tenth to widows and orphans. 
In general, it may be said, with reference to gross- 
est vices and revolting superstitions, as truly as 
in the case of the ancient Corinthians : " And 
such were some of you : but ye are washed ; but 
ye are sanctified ; but ye are justified in the name 
of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." 
Sacred hymns may be heard from the lips of 
oarsmen, as they glide among rocks and masses 
of floating ice. At New Herrnhut, a bell, the » 
gift of the station Umanak, bears the motto : 
" Come, for all things are ready," and that sweet 
invitation mingles with the tempest as it howls 
around the turfed dwelling and about the rude 
sanctuary. Let the sound be wafted westward 
across Davis' Straits, and onward to Behring's 
Straits. 

The one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of 
the Greenland mission is at hand (1883). Let 
it be kept in mind by the Moravian church, and 
the whole church of Christ, that all the tribes 
which skirt the Polar Sea, on both continents, 
are to be evangelized. It should be done, it may 
be done, chiefly by their own kinsmen. Existing 
Eskimo converts need the elevating and inspirit- 
ing influence of foreign evangelization. They 
must enter upon it, gather physical and spiritual 
nerve thereby, or they will die out. That conse- 
cration of two young men — Matthew Stach and 



262 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vi 

Frederick Bonisch, as they kneeled for prayer in 
a grove at Herrnhut, their hearts drawn toward 
Greenland, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and 
thirty-one — meant, we think, complete arctic evan- 
gelization; it meant the church-bell and church 
ordinances, and millennial glory, all round the 
frozen north of Asia, as well as America. While 
we here may have no personal agency in that 
branch of evangelistic work, let us have a share 
in cries to Heaven for the blessed consumma- 
tion. 1 

Captain Franklin, in the narrative of his second 
expedition, records that some of the elderly na- 
tives said : " We believe there is a Great Spirit, 
who created everything, both us and the world 
for our use. We suppose that he dwells in the 
lands from whence the white people come, that 
he is kind to the inhabitants of those lands, and 
that there are people there who never die; the 
winds that blow from that quarter [south] are 
always warm. He does not know of the wretched 

1 An Eskimo Christian once said: "When, in summer, we 
carry a light" — usually dry moss, soaked with oil — "from one 
tent to another, from which burning flakes often fall to the 
ground, they quickly set the dry grass on fire. Thus, when our 
Saviour came upon earth, he brought fire along with him, and 
scattered it around among men. And now he sends his ser- 
vants forth into all the world, even unto us, with his Word; 
this they have scattered amongst us, and it has enkindled and 
put life into our hearts, so that we no longer walk in darkness 
as do others/' 



lect.vi.] THE ESKIMO FUTURE. 263 

state of our island, nor of the pitiful condition 
in which we are." Ah, benighted brothers of 
the North ! He does know, and we know ; and 
annually at least, when the flotillas of ice come 
down from your wretched region, we will accept 
their presence as an appeal to pour out our hearts 
in your behalf. 



LECTURE VII. 

MISSIONS TO NORTH-AMERICAN 
INDIANS. 



MISSIONS TO NORTH-AMERICAN 
INDIANS. 



We will set ourselves back three hundred years 
in the history of this continent. No French set- 
tlement is to be found in Canada or Acadia, 
and no English settlement in New England or 
Virginia ; a foothold has not been secured by 
the Dutch on Manhattan Island, nor by the Span- 
iards in Florida. From the Atlantic westward 
there stretches a vast wilderness, with forests 
unbroken save by noble streams and lakes. In 
those forests, along those watercourses, and 
around those lakes, no Caucasian white men, no 
African black men, are to be found ; but only a 
copper-colored race — a race differing materially 
from Eskimos who inhabit the subarctic regions. 
Poetry and romance have pictured the earlier 
character of the red man in colors quite untrue 
to the original. 1 



1 Poetry has sometimes been not less at fault in regard to 
the Indian's surroundings. Campbell, in his Gertrude of Wyoming, 
depicts the Oneidas of Western New York as hunting the alli- 
gator and condor. The latter is to be found no nearer than 
among the Andes of South America. 

(267) 



268 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

Casting an eye over the wide domain of Amer- 
ica, North and South, we behold a race with sub- 
stantially the same physical characteristics, from 
present British Possessions, through all varieties 
of climate, to Patagonia. Tribal peculiarities will 
be noticed, yet everywhere a strong general simi- 
larity. We will limit our view, however, to the 
territory lying between the Atlantic and the Mis- 
sissippi. We here see a man erect; hands and 
feet small ; skin soft to the touch ; hair straight, 
black, devoid of lustre, coarse, approaching to 
that of a horse's mane ; eyes dark and deep-set^; 
cheek bones high; countenance hard and cold. 
His senses are acute ; he is swift of foot, and free 
from personal defect or deformity. Hunting and 
fishing yield him chief subsistence ; he has never 
domesticated an animal for the sake of milk. 
Here and there, the soil is tilled, though by 
woman. She alone plants, reaps, cooks, builds, 
and is the universal drudge, the beast of burden. 
The Indian himself, proud, lordly, lazy, " unspeak- 
ably indolent and slothful," says David Brainerd, 
disdains service. He is improvident and reckless. 
This haughty idler — I speak of the Indian in 
his aboriginal state — has no fine feelings, no gen- 
uine cheerfulness, no sense of the comic, which 
is so abundant among Africans ; he is impassive, 
and hence in the wigwam there are few bick- 
erings. Once roused, his joy becomes a frenzy, 
and allies itself with passions and associations 



lect.vii.] ABORIGINES. 269 

that are maniacal. He is jealous, envious, and 
to the last degree vindictive, never forgiving an 
injury. Of dissembling he is a great master; 
but the secret of that art is the inspiration of 
deep revenge. Genuine courage he has not ; he 
is a creature of stratagems; stealth and ambush 
are his forte. Pity has no place in his heart ; the 
tomahawk makes no discrimination between the 
strong arm of a foe and the helplessness of old 
age or of infancy. Under privations and suffer- 
ings, the red man exhibits intrepidity — an intre- 
pidity, however, due to indomitable pride, and 
to a stern rigidity of nature, rather than to any- 
thing truly heroic. All his education, all tradi- 
tions, fortify him for bidding grim defiance to his 
foes. The noble Indian, whether of earlier or later 
times, is, for the most part, a myth. Quick to 
perceive, the red man is sluggish and inapt as a 
reasoner. His deliberateness in counsel seems to 
be due more to the fact that time is of no value 
to him, and that he has mastered the mock wis- 
dom of dilatoriness, than to any habit of dispas- 
sionate reflection, or deference to the opinions 
of others. He is proverbially taciturn. His ora- 
tory, when he attempts it, is pompous, usually 
mere magniloquence, marked by a high key in 
delivery, and by an abundant imagery, sometimes 
beautiful, now and then pathetic and impressive. 
Rude and meagre pictorial devices form his near- 
est approach to culture. 



270 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

As to their languages, it is a striking fact that 
American aborigines, Eskimos included, from the 
Arctic Ocean to the Straits of Magellan, how- 
ever various their vocabularies, have, so far as is 
known, but one type of speech, the Otomi of 
Mexico excepted. It is estimated that, at the 
present time, the Indians on these two continents, 
North and South America, speak between four 
and five hundred distinct languages ; while the 
dialects 1 employed number, perhaps, two thou- 
sand. Here is an astonishing diversity as to sub- 
stance, amidst similarity of structure. Words 
are often a heap of abraided syllables, fifteen or 
twenty in number, a single term sometimes con- 
stituting a sentence by itself. The largest num- 
ber of ideas can be expressed in the smallest 
number of words — all the complex modifications 
of subject and object, object and action, being 
combined. We are reminded that Cotton Mather, 
speaking of the Indian language, which John 
Eliot reduced to writing, says of the words : 
"One would think they had been growing ever 
since Babel unto the dimensions to which they 
are now extended." So characteristic and vital 
is this feature of aggregation, that seldom does 
a word stand by itself, expressing an abstract 
idea ; every word must usually have something 
associated with it by combination, as " my house," 

1 A. H. Keane in Bates's Central and South America, 243. 



lect. vxx.3 LANGUAGES. 271 

never "house" alone. No substantive verb, no in- 
finitives are found, yet verbs predominate. There 
is an almost limitless power of combining, so that 
great affluence of words exists, and, with flexibil- 
ity, an unusual regularity. Whatever the pov- 
erty of ideas among Indian nations, their lan- 
guages are rich in forms and terms. There was 
no literature to give permanency to language. 
Neighboring tribes often differ wiclety in their 
methods of speech; the Mohegans, for instance, 
using a profusion of labials, but the Mohawks 
none. The native languages have been charac- 
terized as polysynthetic, and this feature is but a 
reflex of the Indian mind, which does not analyze 
and discriminate, but views things only in the 
gross. Neither habit nor language favors abstrac- 
tion. 

The whole aboriginal population on that terri- 
tory east of the Mississippi, which now belongs 
to the United States, probably did not equal the 
present number of inhabitants in any one of eight 
different cities within the same limits — two hun- 
dred thousand ; x that population, too, was distrib- 
uted into numerous tribes, and most of the tribes 
into clans. Individual independence is the red 



1 The whole number in North America at the present time 
does not equal 1,000,000; the whole number in the United 
States, both east and west of the Mississippi, is less than 
275,000. 



272 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

man's boast, the chase his delight, war his glory. 
Tillage is of the rudest sort ; flocks and herds 
there are none. Hunter-life everywhere forbids 
the gathering into populous settlements. These 
unsocial stoics of the wigwam, these alternately 
phlegmatic and fierce denizens of the forest, are 
the Bedouin of the New World. 

Before becoming acquainted with Europeans, it 
does not appear that the men of the woods had any 
well-defined idea of a Supreme Being. Their lan- 
guages had no word for " God," for " holiness," for 
"justice," or "thankfulness." Were they profane? 
Nay, for terms were wanting with which to be 
guilty of profaneness. Nature seemed to them 
vaguely peopled by inferior divinities — Manitous 
— no one of which was an object of love or of 
pleasing reverence, but all rather to be dreaded, 
and needing, on special occasions, to be propi- 
tiated. Charms were in use, dreams much ob- 
served. Their powwows, the sheerest charlatans, 
were at once priests, physicians and conjurers; 
and their whole religion a system of sorcery based 
upon superstitious fears. Their highest concep- 
tion of a future state was a reproduction of 
the present amidst " happy hunting-grounds " in 
some region remote and ill-defined. Immortality 
of the soul was sometimes distinctly affirmed : x 
" We Indians cannot die eternally ; even Indian 

1 Loskiel (Latrobe's), 36. 



lect.vii.] EELIGION. 273 

corn buried in the ground is vivified and rises 
again." Such substantially were the American 
aborigines, and more especially within the limits 
occupied or claimed by British colonists. 

Sad indeed is it to contemplate such a people, 
spreading over two continents, for weary centuries 
maintaining petty warfare, like true sons of Ish- 
mael, and, to some extent it would seem, deteriorat- 
ing rather than improving. " The way of peace 
they had not known." Did some guilty infatua- 
tion lead them hither ? Was it for special crimes 
that they were driven from the earlier seats of 
mankind, and from all possible reach of apostolic 
enterprise? Why were they allowed to remain 
for fifteen centuries isolated from the Christian 
world ? * With their dark and mysterious ante- 
cedents we can never become acquainted; the 
secrets of an all-wise Providence must remain 
forever concealed. 

From the time that this people became known 
in Europe, some thoughtful minds were impressed 
with the importance of communicating to them 
the Christian religion. Roman Catholic methods 
and enterprise in that direction, proceeding from 



1 Chapter forty-eight of Fabricius's Lux Evangelii is devoted 
to the subject : De America — Num in Mam quoque Apostoli penitra- 
verint. Apostolos etiam penetrasse in Americam multi contendunt ex 
Propheticarum pr&dictionum, ex mandati Christi, et testimoniorum 
Apostolicorum universal itate yenerali sine exceptione ad totum qui sub 
ccdo est terrarum orbem et universum genus humanum pertinente. 763. 

18 



274 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. Clect. vii. 

France and Spain, we need not now consider. 
The story of French missions among the Abenakis, 
the Hurons, the Iroquois, and other tribes, in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a story of 
heroism and of rare privations. The early settle- 
ments of our fathers in New England were not 
without a distinctive missionary element. That 
was avowed at the time ; it was incorporated into 
early charters ; it found expression in seasonable 
efforts to Christianize the natives. Legislative 
action was had at Plymouth (1636) and at Boston 
(1646) with reference to evangelizing the Indians ; 
and it must always be acknowledged as peculiarly 
significant that the Massachusetts colony should 
have adopted for its seal the device of an Indian 
with this legend on a scroll : " Come over and 
help us." "The General Court of Massachu- 
setts," says Dr. Palfrey, " was the first missionary 
society in Protestant Christendom." The labors 
of John Eliot, begun just before the middle of 
the seventeenth century, are known throughout the 
Protestant world. Thomas Mayhew was already 
at work on Martha's Vineyard when Eliot began 
his work (1646) ; and the family of Mayhews did 
not fail for five generations in their uninterrupted 
line of similar Christian effort till within the pres- 
ent century (1806). Other honored names be- 
long to the earlier period. Thirty years after the 
" Apostle to the Indians " entered on his mission- 
ary work, twenty-four regular congregations had 



lect.vii.j EAELY MISSIONS. 275 

been gathered in Massachusetts, with the same 
number of native preachers (1675) ; fifty years 
from the same date (1696) there were thirty In- 
dian churches, in some of which a native pastor- 
ate had been established, and three fourths of the 
whole Indian population (3,000 out of 4,168) were 
accounted Christians. Meanwhile " The Society 
for Propagating the Gospel in New England" was 
incorporated in Old England (1649) ; and, just 
sixty years later (1709), the " Society in Scotland 
for Propagating Christian Knowledge." At the 
opening of the last century (1700), thirteen mis- 
sionaries, supported by government, might be seen 
laboring in the English colonies, and others not 
thus supported were similarly engaged. In Rhode 
Island, but more especially in Connecticut, a meas- 
ure of success, though less than in Massachusetts, 
attended such efforts. The eastern part of Long 
Island was the scene of Horton's labors. John 
Sergeant left a tutorship in Yale College (1734) 
to collect roving Mohegans into a Christian settle- 
ment at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where he was 
succeeded by the immortal Edwards in a service 
of six years. Time fails to speak, in this connec- 
tion, of what was effected by David Brainerd and 
his brother John ; by Eleazer Wheelock, through 
the "Charity School;" by Samuel Kirkland, among 
the Oneiclas (1764-1808); and by various denomi- 
national missions of the present century, in behalf 
of tribes chiefly outside of that geographical field 



276 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

to which, for the most part, Moravian zeal devoted 
itself. 

The year 1734 was, for that period, one of note 
in the missionary world. It was the year in which 
a new station in Greenland, called Christian's 
Hope, was founded. A reinforcement went out 
from Denmark to establish a Christian colony at 
Disco Bay ; fourteen Moravian brethren and sis- 
ters, designated to St. Croix, arrived in the West 
Indies ; and John Sergeant, as just stated, began 
his labors among the Stockbridge Indians. It 
was also the date of the first movement from 
Herrnhut in behalf of the red man. The Eng- 
lish trustees offered to Count Zinzendorf a tract 
of land in the province of Georgia; and the hope 
arose in his mind that access might thus be 
obtained to the Creeks, Chickasaws and Chero- 
kees. Through the negotiation of Bishop Span- 
genberg in London, General Oglethorpe secured 
pecuniary aid ; and the use of houses and land 
in Savannah was granted, till a tract on the 
river Ogeechee could be cleared. The first com- 
pany of United Brethren, who started from 
Herrnhut under the conduct of John Toltschig 
and Anthony Seiffart, and, accompanied by Span- 
genberg, arrived in Georgia in the spring of 1735 ; 
and an expedition of that kind was then equiva- 
lent to a voyage round the world in our day. 
Such was the first company from any quarter 
that reached the shores of America with the 



lect.vii.1 MORAVIANS IN GEORGIA. 277 

express and leading object of evangelizing na- 
tives. On the part of sundry others, that had 
been, and continued to be, an object, yet a sub- 
ordinate object. It should stand out conspicu- 
ously in the annals of Christ's church, that, from 
the heart of Germany, from a community so 
small and so recently gathered, there might be 
seen a band of men and women, a century and a 
half ago, finding their way to the seaboard, and 
thence across the Atlantic, on such a missionary 
errand. A larger company, under the lead of 
David Nitschmann, joined them. Labor was be- 
gun among Creek Indians on the island Irene, 
five miles up the Savannah River, and their con- 
fidence secured. But, when the Spaniards en- 
deavored to drive out the English colony from 
Georgia, the Moravians were called upon to bear 
arms. Military service was contrary to their 
principles — principles which in London they dis- 
tinctly avowed, and in view of which exemption 
had been granted. Their situation becoming 
extremely uncomfortable on that account, they 
withdrew to Pennsylvania (1738 and 1739) ; and 
thus, after three years, this incipient mission was 
suspended. 

Spangenberg, having visited Pennsylvania, re- 
turned to Herrnhut (1739), and his representa- 
tions concerning the Indians made such an im- 
pression that several of the Brethren resolved 
to hold themselves ready for evangelistic ser- 



278 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

vice among those savage heathens, and Christian 
Henry Ranch led the way. The instructions 
given him are worth remembering : " Not in any 
wise to interfere with the labors of other mission- 
aries or ministers, or cause any disturbance among 
them, but silently to observe whether any of the 
heathen were by the grace of God prepared to 
receive the Word of Life — that, even if only one 
was to be found desirous of hearing, to him the 
gospel should be preached; for God must give 
the heathen ears to hear the gospel, and hearts 
to receive it." Arriving in New York (1740), 
he found there an embassy of Mohegan Indians. 
Their names were Tschoop, 1 or Choop, and Sha- 
bash, the former a chief, and both of them de- 
based drunkards. Though dissuaded by friends 
in New York, Rauch followed these men to their 
homes at Shekomeko in White Plains, Dutchess 
County, fifty miles south of Albany, near the 
confines of Connecticut. 2 By means of the Dutch 
language, with which the Indians there had be- 
come partially acquainted, Rauch was enabled to 



1 His original Indian name was Wasamapah; his English 
name before baptism, Job; his baptismal name, John. Bishop 
De Schweinitz (Life of Zeisberger, 98) is of opinion that 
I'schoop must be a misnomer for the German name of Job, viz., 
Hiob. 

2 Heckewelder, in his Narrative, 418, speaks of Shekomeko 
as "hordering on the Connecticut Kiver," instead of Province of 
Connecticut. 



lect.vii.] AT SHEKOMEKO. 279 

make known the essential truths of Christianity, 
and the two savages were at length converted. 
Before baptism, Tschoop wrote a letter in which 
occur expressions like these : " I have been a 
poor wild heathen, and for forty years as igno- 
rant as a dog. I was the greatest drunkard and 
the most willing slave of the Devil; and, as I 
knew nothing of our Saviour, I served vain idols, 
which I now wish to see destroyed by fire. Of 
this I have repented with many tears. . . . Now, 
I feel and believe that our Saviour alone can 
help me by the power of his blood, and no other. 
I believe that he is my God and my Saviour, who 
died on the cross for me, a sinner. I wish to be 
baptized, and long for it most ardently." It was 
signed, "I am your poor, wild Tschoop." The 
fierce and profligate man became lamb-like in 
character ; and for four years served the mission, 
or rather the Master, actively and usefully. He 
had peculiar tact in employing symbols and illus- 
trations. Describing human wickedness, he took 
a piece of charcoal, and drew on a board a figure 
of a heart, with stings and points in all direc- 
tions. " This," he said, " is the state of man's 
heart while Satan dwells in it ; every evil thing 
proceeds from it." Bishop Spangenberg declared 
that he had the countenance of a Luther. He 
acquired energy and clearness of speech, and at 
times was truly eloquent. His aptness in replies 
was not unlike the great Reformer. A woman 



280 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

said to him: "As soon as I have a good heart, 
I will turn to the Lord Jesus." "Ah!" replied 
Tschoop, "you want to walk on your head ! How 
can you get a good heart unless you first come 
to Jesus?" 1 In recounting his conversion, the 
once sottish Tschoop gave, at the same time, a 
valuable lecture on preaching. "Brethren," said 
he, "I have been a heathen, and have grown 
old amongst the heathen; therefore I know how 
heathen think. Once a preacher came, and be- 
gan to explain that there is a God. We an- 
swered : ; Dost thou think us so ignorant as not 
to know that? Go back to the place whence 
thou earnest.' Then again another preacher came 
and began to teach us, and to say : ' You must 
not steal nor lie nor get drunk.' We answered : 
1 Thou fool ! dost thou think we do not know 
that? Learn thyself first, and then teach the 
people to whom thou belongest to leave off these 
things. For who steals or lies, or is more 
drunken, than thine own people ? ' And thus we 
dismissed him. After some time, Brother Chris- 
tian Henry Rauch came into my hut, and sat 
down by me. He spoke to me nearly as follows : 
'I come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven 
and earth. He sends to let you know that he 
will make you happy, and deliver you from the 
misery in which you lie at present. To this end 

1 He died at Bethlehem, Penn., August 27, 1746. 



lect.vii.] AT SHEKOMEKO. 281 

he became a man, gave his life a ransom for 
man, and shed his blood for him,' etc. When he 
had finished his discourse, he lay down upon a 
board, fatigued by the journey, and fell into 
a sound sleep. I then thought : c What kind 
of a man is this? There he lies and sleeps. I 
might kill him, and then throw him out into 
the wood, and who would regard it? But this 
gives him no concern.' However, I could not 
forget his words. They constantly recurred to 
my mind. Even when I was asleep, I dreamt 
of that blood which Christ shed for us. I found 
this to be something different from what I had 
ever heard, and I interpreted Christian Henry's 
words to the other Indians. Thus, through the 
grace of God, an awakening took place amongst 
us. I say, therefore" — and, in repeating, I would 
also adopt the words of that rude professor of 
homiletics — "I say, therefore, Brethren, preach 
Christ our Saviour and his sufferings and death, 
if you would have your words to gain entrance 
amongst the heathen." J 

A Christian congregation was established at 
Shekomeko, and at the end of 1742 there were 
thirty-one baptized natives. Other Moravian la- 
borers joined Rauch. They dressed and lived 
after the manner of Indians, and even worked 
for them to earn daily bread. By the close of 

1 LoskieFs History, Part II, 14, 15. 



282 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

the year following, sixty-nine had received bap- 
tism. Some of the Indians came twenty-five 
and thirty miles to attend upon worship and 
instruction. These were chiefly from Pachgat- 
goch, 1 near the present town of Kent, in Litch- 
field County, Connecticut, and missionaries vis- 
ited that place ; they also visited Potatick, in Fair- 
field County, twentj^-four miles from New Haven, 
near Newtown. They toured and taught to the 
north, at Wechquadnach near Sharon, at Whitak 
near Salisbury, and at Westenhuc, probably Hou- 
satonic, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts. It 
startles us to find these indefatigable men from 
Germany penetrating into New England, and by 
their example bringing a silent rebuke to the 
English settlements. Thoughtful natives could 
not help noticing a contrast. At one time, when 
a trader was endeavoring to persuade a Christian 
named Abraham that the Brethren were not privi- 
leged teachers, he replied : " They may be what 
they will; but I know what they have told me, 
and what God has wrought within me. Look 
at my poor countrymen there, lying drunk before 
your door. Why do you not send privileged teach- 
ers to convert them if they can ? Four years ago, 
I also lived like a beast, and not one of you 
troubled himself about me ; but when the Breth- 
ren came, they preached the cross of Christ, and 

1 Called by the whites Scatticohe. 



lect.vii.] EN" CONNECTICUT. 283 

I have experienced the power of his blood, ac- 
cording to their doctrine, so that I am freed from 
the dominion of sin. Such teachers we want." 
These native helpers often showed rare firmness. 
A chief who had received the baptismal name 
of Gideon, 1 and had become a fellow-worker, was 
one day attacked by a savage, who, aiming his 
gun at him, shouted: "Now 111 shoot you, for 
you speak of nothing but Jesus ! " " If Jesus 
does not permit you," answered Gideon, " you 
cannot shoot me." The man dropped his gun, 
and turned away in silence. 

The Indians at the settlements which have been 
named were chiefly remnants of Mohegans, Nar- 
ragansetts and Wampanoags; but the popular 
name of those among whom the Brethren la- 
bored in Connecticut, was Scatticokes. Those 
in the Valley of the Housatonic at Kent (Pach- 
gatgoch) became, in some good measure and in 
considerable numbers, a Christian community; 
over a hundred and twenty of them were bap- 
tized ; a place for worship was built ; and such 
hold had religion taken upon the natives, such 
reformation had been effected, that rumsellers, 
and dissolute persons round about, found their 
gains cut off. Demetrius became alarmed for 
his shrines, and enraged that his craft was "in 



1 The original name was Manwehu. De Forest's Indians of 
Connecticut, 407. 



284 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

danger of being brought to nought." A scheme 
was set on foot for driving the missionaries from 
the whole region. It was charged that they were 
emissaries of the French — France being then at 
war with England. An attempt was made to 
exact military service from the Brethren. They 
were summoned to Poughkeepsie and required 
to take an oath, both of which acts Were a viola- 
tion of their principles; for at that day Moravians 
harmonized — though now they do not in these 
two particulars — with the followers of William 
Penn. Pains were taken to poison the minds of 
English and Dutch colonists and magistrates, as 
well as heathen Indians, towards them. The 
Assembly of New York passed two acts — one 
requiring all suspicious persons to take the oath 
of allegiance, or leave the Province; the other, 
enjoining Moravians, and vagrant teachers among 
the Indians, to desist from further teaching or 
preaching, and to depart from the Province. The 
sheriff of Dutchess County, assisted by three 
justices of the peace, closed the mission chapel. 
Here and there, it is true, dispassionate testimony 
was borne to the character of the Brethren and 
to the results of their labor. A justice of the 
peace at Filkentown declared that "he must 
acknowledge the mission in Shekomeko to be 
a work of God, because, by the labor of the 
Brethren, the most savage heathen had been 
so evidently changed, that he, with many other 



lect.vii.] IN PENNSYLVANIA. 285 

Christians, were put to shame by their godly walk 
and conversation." J A justice of the peace from 
the neighborhood, who accompanied Bishop Span- 
genberg on his visit to Shekomeko, affirmed that 
he would rather have his hand cut off than treat 
the Brethren in accordance with the act which 
had been passed against them, for with his own 
eyes he could see that wonders of grace had been 
wrought among the Indians. 2 Five years later 
(1749), the Parliament of Great Britain put a 
check upon such unauthorized provincial legis- 
lation, by an act for encouraging the people 
known by the name of Unitas Fratrum, or United 
Brethren, to settle in his majesty's colonies, allow- 
ing them " to make a solemn affirmation in lieu of 
an oath, and exempting them from military ser- 
vice.'' 3 The Brethren were law-abiding men, 
peaceably inclined, and accordingly betook them- 
selves to Pennsylvania, 4 whither, with the excep- 
tion of seventy-one converts, the Christian Indians 
followed, who, upon leaving, were loaded with 
jeers and curses. White men at once seized their 
lands, with the purpose of never allowing the ex- 

1 Heckewelder's Narrative, 25. 

2 " Da wir aber selbst hinkamen o meine Brilder ! " exclaims the 
good Bishop, " dass musste ein todter Mensch seyn, der nicht iiber 
der Gnade, die diesen Volke wiederfahren ist, in Thrdnen zerflosse." 
Loskiel, 285. 

3 Life of /Zeisberger, 118, 154. 

4 In 1755, Raucb conducted a Moravian colony to the District 
of Wacovia in North Carolina. 



286 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

iles to reoccupy them. Thus was the second 
Moravian mission, which proved a success for the 
time, and had' reasonably awakened strong hopes, 
broken up by prejudiced and evil-minded men. 
In 1749, labors were renewed at the old stations 
in New York and New England. Wechquadnach 
was not entirely abandoned till 1753, nor Pachgat- 
goch till 1770, missionaries continuing to visit such 
Christian remnants as preferred persecution to ex- 
ile, and so lingered behind. Only fifty miles to 
the north of this field of Moravian effort, and six- 
teen to the east of Albany, was Kaunaumeek, 
where David Brainerd began his labors among the 
Indians, spending the next year there (1743), after 
Rauch commenced at Shekomeko. The place is 
now known as "Brainerd's Bridge," 1 but no mon- 
ument marks the spot. 2 

It will be recollected that upon the Spanish in- 
vasion of Georgia, Moravian missionaries among 
the Creeks felt constrained to retire from that field. 
They took passage in George WliitefielcTs sloop, 
and, with the celebrated preacher, reached Phila- 
delphia April 25, 1740. Under an engagement to 
him, they began building a school-house for negro 



1 Not named for the missionary, but for Jeremiah Brainerd. 

2 In 1859, the Moravian Historical Society, with appropriate 
observances, dedicated to the memory of Christian Rauch and 
Gottlob Biittner monuments at Shekomeko, overlooking a sheet 
of water called Gnadensee, " Lake of Grace ; " and, at Wechquad- 
nach, one to the memory of David Bruce and Joseph Powell. 



lect.vii.] ALGONQUINS AND IBOQTTOIS. 287 

children, still known as the " Whitefield House," 
and which, with its museum of Moravian relics, 
no stranger at the present day, in visiting Nazar- 
eth, Northampton County, fails to inspect. The 
next 3 r ear, that site was abandoned for one on the 
Lehigh River, fifty miles from Philadelphia ; and 
there was founded Bethlehem, now the most im- 
portant Moravian settlement in the United States, 
the Herrnhut of America, and which early became 
the center of direction for the missions of the 
United Brethren among Indian tribes. 

Nearly all the Province of Pennsylvania was 
within the limits of the widespread Algonquin 
family, which also included Virginia, Maryland, a 
great part of the Middle States, New England, 
Western States to the Mississippi, and British 
Possessions toward the extreme north. Differ- 
ences in their language are only dialectic. One 
of the dialects was that into which Eliot trans- 
lated the Bible. The natives in Western Connec- 
ticut and beyond the western border of that State, 
among whom we have seen the Moravians labor- 
ing, were branches of the same stock. But within 
this far-reaching Algonquin field was a distinct and 
a comparatively compact race, Huron-Iroquois. 
They occupied New York, a part of Pennsylvania, 
and a part of Canada north of Lake Erie. These 
two families were geographically situated some- 
what as the Wendish stock is encompassed, like 
an island, by the Teutons of Northern Europe. 



288 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

The Iroquois, first known to English colonists as 
"The Five Nations," afterwards * better known as 
" The Six Nations," were the fierce Ishmaelites of 
the land, ever at war with neighbors. Their local 
position, a peculiarly favorable one, extended from 
the gate of the Great Lakes to the head-waters of 
the Ohio, the Delaware, the Susquehanna and the 
Hudson. Energetic and sagacious, they had a 
brain-measure superior to other aborigines, and a 
general development, though savage, yet superior 
to that of surrounding savages. Their confeder- 
acy, represented by fifty sachems in a general 
council, accustomed to meet at the Onondaga 
capital, gave them the advantage of concert, so 
much wanting generally among Indian tribes, and 
was at once a source and proof of more advanced 
capacity and power. They were proportionately 
haughty, entertaining exalted notions of their 
rank, and admitting the king of England alone to 
be on a parity with them. To this proud and 
warlike confederacy the peace-loving Moravians 
proposed to carry the gospel. Pyrlseus, who had 
visited the Mohawks and acquired their language, 
was appointed to teach the same in a kind of insti- 
tute at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. But, this being 
a time of excited suspicion on account of the war 
between England and France, the young men 



1 The related tribe :.f Tuscaroras, from North Carolina, was 
adopted 1712-1715. 



lect.vii.] MISSION TO DELA WARES. 289 

destined for service among the Six Nations could 
not then secure favorable access. Two of his 
pupils, Zeisberger and Mack, were designated to 
labor at Shamokin, now Sunbury, Northumber- 
land County, an Indian town on the Susque- 
hanna, fifty-six miles north of Harrisburg; and 
there the former of these two, Zeisberger, began 
his Iroquois dictionary. He visited Wyoming, in 
Luzerne County, opposite the mouth of the Lack- 
awanna, which, as well as the place just named, 
was one of the Iroquois dependencies. Little suc- 
cess, however, attended Moravian efforts among 
the Six Nations. 

Among the Delawares, they met with encourage- 
ment. This people — whose native name is Lenni- 
Lenape, belonging to the great Algonquin family, 
and recognized originally by other branches of 
that stock as " Grandfathers " — were more widely 
scattered than the Six Nations, but inferior to 
them in prowess. Indeed, they were a conquered 
people, and hence, in token of subjection, called 
"Women." They were, however, more accessible 
to Christian influences. But the first missionary 
stations established in Pennsylvania were at set- 
tlements of Christian Indian refugees, not of the 
Delaware stock, from those earlier fields in Eastern 
New York and the western part of Connecticut, 
whence they had been driven by the hostility of 
neighboring white settlers. The names Friedens- 
hiitten, "Tents of Peace," at Bethlehem (1746), 

19 



290 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.vii. 

and soon after Gnadenhiitten, " Tents of Grace," 
on the Mahony, 1 in Carbon County, as well as a 
second Gnadenhiitten, 2 indicate the ever-hopeful 
spirit and pious imagination of the harassed Mora- 
vians. In process of time, Christian labor was 
commenced at various places successively in be- 
half of Indian natives of Pennsylvania, who, as 
well as immigrants from the East, became fugi- 
tives in turn. Within the present limits of Mun- 
roe County were Wechquetank 3 and Meniolago- 
mekak ; 4 in Lehigh County, Nain ; s in Bradford 
County, the second Friedenshutten ; 6 Machiwihi- 
lusing, near by (1765), and Schechschiquaniink, 
some thirty miles distant. 7 Venango County had 
within its borders Goschgoschiink, 8 on the east 



1 Signifying " Deer Lick," where was a salt-spring. 

2 Now Weissport, on the east bank of the Lehigh (1754), 
destroyed by the French Indians, 1756. 

3 In the present town of Polk, twenty-seven miles north of 
Nain (1760). From here and from Nain, Indians were removed 
to the Philadelphia barracks, 1763. 

4 In Eldred Township, on the north bank of the Aquanshi- 
cola, eight miles west of Wind Gap. 

5 Where is now Hanover, two miles from Bethlehem, settled 
by fugitives from other stations, 1758; abandoned 1765. 

6 On the east side of the Susquehanna, two miles below Wya- 
lusing Creek, where the Christian Indians who had been trans- 
ported to Philadelphia were established, 1765 ; abandoned 177a. 

7 A town of the Monseys, on the west branch of the Susque- 
hanna (1769). 

8 A Monsey town occupied by Zeisberger (1765), the first 
white man in the place. 



LECT.vn.i MISSION TO DELA WAKES. 291 

branch of the Alleghany, and three miles above 
Lawunakhannek, 1 which was abandoned 1770; 
and, at the extreme west of the State, Lawrence 
County had its Friedensstadt, "City of Peace." 2 
Still later, Ohio witnessed the labors and severe 
trials of Moravian missionaries, especially in the 
valley of the Tuscarawas River. The countjr 
bearing that name reckoned at different times six 
stations : Gekelemukpechiink, 3 the first capital of 
the Delawares in Ohio, and where the first Protest- 
ant sermon in that State was preached (1771); 
Gnadenhiitten the Third; 4 Schonbrunn, "Beauti- 
ful Spring," 5 where the first meeting-house and 
first school-house in the State were built, and the 
first white child was born (1773) ; also new Schon- 
brunn, 6 Salem, 7 and Goshen. 8 The neighboring 



1 In the midst of the present oil region (1769). The Indians 
were acquainted with petroleum, and used it for medicinal pur- 
poses. 

2 On Beaver River (1770) ; deserted 1773. 

3 In the town of Oxford ; abandoned by the tribe 1775. 

4 In Clay Township, on the Tuscarawas River (1772). The 
Indians were massacred 1782. 

5 In Goshen, two miles from New Philadelphia; the first 
settlement of Christian Indians in Ohio. 

6 Also in Goshen, on the opposite side of the Tuscarawas 
River (1779) ; destroyed in 1782. 

7 On the west bank of the Tuscarawas River, a mile or two 
from Port Washington (1780). 

8 In the present town of Goshen, seven miles from Gnaden- 
hiitten, the last settlement of Christian Indians established by 
Zeisberger (1798). 



292 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

county of Coshocton has a record of the two sta- 
tions — Goschachgiink, 1 the second capital of the 
Delawares; and Lichtenau, 2 "Pasture of Light." 
To the north we find Pilgerruh, 3 "Pilgrim's Rest," 
in Cuyahoga County ; New Salem, 4 in Erie 
County; and, further west, Captives' Town. 5 The 
State of Michigan also had its New Gnaden- 
hiitten. 6 Crossing into Canada West, we light 
upon Die Warte,? "The Watch-Tower," at the 
mouth of Detroit River ; Fairfield, 8 on the right 
bank of the Thames, and New Fairfield, 9 on its 
left bank. 

Now, whence came the men who sought out 



1 Now Coshocton, on the Muskingum, below the junction of 
the Tuscarawas and Walholding. 

2 On the east bank of the Muskingum, two or three miles 
below Coshocton; the third settlement of Christian Indians in 
the State (1776). 

3 In the town of Independence, on the east bank of the 
Cuyahoga River, where, however, the Christian Indians re- 
mained only one year (1786). 

4 In the township of Milan, a few miles from the mouth of 
the Huron River (1787) ; abandoned 1791. 

5 In Antrim, Wyandot County, on the Sandusky River, eleven 
miles below Upper Sandusky (1781). 

6 In Clinton, Macomb County, on the south side of the Clin- 
ton River (1782). 

7 Near Amherstburg, a stopping-place of Christian Indians 
in 1791-2. 

8 In Oxford, eighty-five miles from the mouth of the river 
(1792). 

9 In Oxford, a mile and a half from Fairfield, back from the 
river. 



lect.vii.] HOMES OF MORAVIANS. 293 

bands of savage aborigines, and followed them 
from valley to valley, over mountain ridges and 
through primeval forests, before the hand of civi- 
lization had opened even the rudest thorough- 
fares ? Pausing to reflect a moment, it strikes us 
as noteworthy that at the present time our own 
sons and brothers are so widely scattered through 
the heathen world. Yet there is not one of them, 
even among the antipodes, who may not reach his 
birthplace here in much less time than was re- 
quired for an average journey of those Moravians 
from these fields of missionary toil to their native 
seats. They came from Alsace, from the Palatin- 
ate, from the Black Forest, from Wiirtemburg, 
from Swabia, Brandenburg, Holstein, Livonia, 
Polish Prussia, Moravia and Bohemia. They 
came, the first heralds of the gospel, to regions, 
though not to the race, which, after the lapse of a 
century, are now sending forth young men and 
women to Africa, India, China and Japan. Some 
of them belonged, as everywhere else and through 
the whole history of the Unitas Fratrum thus far, 
to the humbler classes; some of them were well 
educated. John Jacob Schmick graduated at the 
University of Konigsberg ; Matthew Hehl, at Tu- 
bingen; and Pyrlaeus, at Leipzig — institutions to 
which numerous young men from our country 
now resort for advanced study. 

From the catalogue of laborers among North- 
American Indians, several names might be selected 



294 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

of men deserving honorable mention in the gen- 
eral history of missions. The name of Chris- 
tian Henry Rauch, the solitary man who landed 
at New York (1740), when, unknown to him, 
the little colony of United Brethren were flying 
from Georgia, followed two degraded Indians to 
their haunt on the confines of Eastern New York, 
and won them to Christ, has been introduced. 
The laborers afterwards on the same field were 
worthy of those monuments which have been 
erected to their memory. Not less worthy of 
mention is John Heckewelder, 1 whose father was 
a native of Moravia, an associate of Zeisberger, 
who started on his first missionary journey before 
he was fully nineteen — a man who rode three 
days and two nights to prevent an Indian out- 
break, and succeeded ; who repeatedly escaped 
attempts of the savages to murder him ; who 
enjoyed the confidence of General Washington; 
who was appointed by the War Department of 
the United States as Assistant Commissioner, at 
different times, with such men as General Ru- 



1 Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, "Volume 
XII, 465. The original work was translated into German, 
and published at Gottingen, 1821. A translation into French, 
by Du Ponceau, appeared in Paris in 1822. Other works by 
Heckewelder: Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren 
among the Delaware and Mohecan Indians, 1820; Names which 
the Lenni-Lenape, or Delaware Indians, give to the Rivers, etc., 
1822. 



lect vii.] HECKEWELDER. 295 

fus Putnam, General Benjamin Lincoln, Colonel 
Timothy Pickering and some others, to negotiate 
treaties of peace with Indian tribes; who wrote 
a valuable history of the Lenni-Lenape, as well as 
other works. In recognizing the special provi- 
dence of God, he makes this record : " I have 
experienced the divine protection in a singular 
manner (for which all glory and praise is due 
to Him), in all those common and inevitable 
dangers to which all those are more or less 
exposed who have to perform similar journej's 
of several hundreds of miles through the wilder- 
ness, continually surrounded by all the perils of 
storms and swollen waters, of hunger and frost, 
by clay and night, and of venomous and raven- 
ous beasts. Four times I have met panthers, 
twice when I was quite alone, which, however, 
after stopping and sitting down opposite to me 
for a short time, rose again without attacking 
me, and slunk off to the forest ; and, at another 
time, I killed in my encampment at Cuyahoga, 
in one day, with the assistance of Indians, six 
rattlesnakes." 1 He was a man to sing, with his 
companion, 2 inspiring German missionary hymns, 
in the midst of a howling wilderness, wild beasts 
and birds the only listeners. Notwithstanding 
an ample experience of toil and privations, the 



1 Rondthaler's Life of Heckewelder, 139. 

2 Christian Frederick Post. 



296 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

useful, cheerful man, a man of great simplicity 
and transparency of character, attained to a good 
old age, even fourscore years ; and in the beauti- 
ful cemetery at Bethlehem, beside the remains 
of fifty-six Indians, rest the remains of this faith- 
ful friend of the Delawares. 

But the name more especially deserving an 
extended notice is that of David Zeisberger, the 
John Eliot of the West, the Apostle of the Dela- 
wares. Born in the village of Zauchtenthal, in 
Eastern Bohemia (1721), he was taken at five 
years of age by his parents, when, leaving their 
all, they fled for conscience' sake to Herrnhut. 
Joining the Moravian colony which was patron- 
ized by General Oglethorpe, they emigrated to 
Georgia (1736), whither their son David, at six- 
teen, followed them from Holland, where he had 
been placed at school. From Georgia, he went 
with the remnants of that colony to Pennsyl- 
vania. At a dinner-table in Bethlehem, as some 
Moravian young men were singing a German 
hymn, 1 in the way of grace, he was deeply im- 
pressed, burst into tears, left the table, and spent 
the afternoon in weeping and praying, till the 
light of Christian hope dawned upon him. The 
hour of conversion was the hour of his consecra- 

1 One of Zinzendorf s well-known hymns : 
" Du ewiger Abgrund der seligen Liebe % 
In Jesu Christo aufgethan." 



lect. vii.] ZEISBEEGEE. 297 

tion to the cause of missions. Soon after, he joined 
the class of students under John Christopher 
Pyrlseus, for the study of Indian languages, and 
was enrolled as one destined for service among 
the heathen. The next year, he went to the 
Valley of the Mohawk (1745), with a view to 
perfecting himself in the Indian language spoken 
there, and King Hendrick became his instructor. 
But the authorities at Albany, entertaining a 
suspicion that he and his companion were spies 
in the interest of France, had them arrested, 
examined, and dismissed to New York City, 
where they were imprisoned for nearly two 
months — an indignity and wrong which were 
borne with characteristic Moravian cheerfulness. 
On leaving the place, they inscribed verses from 
the German hymn-book on the walls of their 
room, as a testimony of their trust in God. Not 
long afterward, Zeisberger was appointed one of 
two envoys to accompany Bishop Spangenberg on 
a deputation to Onondaga, the capital of the Six 
Nations, with a view to negotiations; and in a sim- 
ilar way he accompanied Bishop Cammerhoff to 
the same official center of that powerful league — 
a visit repeated four times at later dates — where 
he built a mission-house, and was made keeper 
of the archives of the Grand Council. He was 
sought for by the Indians to live among them; 
was adopted by the Iroquois, and enrolled in the 
clan of the Turtle ; afterwards was also natural- 



298 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

ized by the Monseys. Scarcely a journey or un- 
dertaking of any kind did he enter upon, which 
had not the welfare of Indians for its object. 

On visiting Herrnhut, he received from Count 
Zinzendorf an appointment, with the imposition of 
hands, as perpetual missionary to the aborigines 
of America ; and faithfully was this commission, 
which accorded with his previous and fixed pur- 
pose, executed. He practiced great self-denial. At 
one time, an associate found him completely pros- 
trated, and yet free, to all appearance, from mal- 
ady. Only after closest questioning did it come 
to light that, in order to relieve the mission treas- 
ury, Zeisberger was limiting himself to the coarsest 
fare, and even that not in sufficient quantity. " He 
would never consent to have his name put down 
on a salary-list, or become a 'hireling,' as he termed 
it, saying that, although a salary might be both 
agreeable and proper for some missionaries, yet in 
his case it would be the contrary. He had de- 
voted himself to the service of the Lord among 
the heathen, without any view of a reward other 
than such as his Lord and Master might deign to 
bestow upon him." Nearly all the stations in 
Pennsylvania which have been named, witnessed 
his zeal; he established the first station in Ohio, 
and labored successfully at all those which have 
been mentioned in that State, as well as, follow- 
ing his beloved flock to Michigan and to Canada, 
still devoting himself to their interests. Every- 



lect.vii.3 HARDSHIPS AJS T D PEKILS. 299 

where men recognized him as a leader. These 
journeys were attended with the greatest hard- 
ships. At that period, the forests were almost 
trackless; dense underwood often entangled the 
traveler ; not unfrequently would he find himself 
sinking in a treacherous morass. No well-graded 
turnpike then traversed the Alleghany and Laurel 
Hill Mountains; bridle-paths were, for the most 
part, all that could be expected — an expectation 
but partially fulfilled in the gloomy and tremen- 
dous wilderness. The explorations made by Zeis- 
berger, the perils and privations he endured, were 
far greater than those of Eliot and the Mayhews. 
Extreme danger was sometimes encountered. 
Now a surly trader, with a war-club, strikes him 
to the ground, stamps on him, and beats him with 
a firebrand ; now a gigantic rattlesnake might be 
felt striking our missionary's limb, or be found 
coiled beneath the pillow on which his head had 
rested during the night. In the course of his 
more than fifty years' journeyings, he passed over 
hundreds of these reptiles, and yet never received 
the slightest injury from them. Substantially the 
same was true of all the other Moravian mission- 
aries among the Indians. Once, as was the case 
with Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, the preservation 
of his life from assassins in ambush was due to his 
having unintentionally taken a wrong path. Only 
by a kind Providence is he saved from the Indian 
massacre at Gnadenhiitten, as well as from the 



300 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.vii. 

hand of the haughty half-king of the Wyandots 
in the Valley of the Muskingum ; by the same 
Providence he is rescued from Indians headed by 
the infamous Simon Girty, and again from the 
tomahawk of a fierce savage at the very instant it 
was falling upon his naked head. His trust was 
in no arm of flesh. 1 If without medicine or pro- 
visions when sickness overtook him in the wilder- 
ness, he did not repine. He made the primitive 
forests of Western Pennsylvania and of Eastern 
Ohio ring with hymns of praise. Usually full of 
forbearance and kindness, gentle and concilia- 
tory in his address, he knew how occasionally to 
administer deserved stern rebuke. Listen to him 
at Goschgoschiink, a village of low, treacherous 
Monseys, where Satan's seat is, and where Wan- 
gomen, a blasphemous preacher of heathenism, 
sways a villanous crowd. The missionary's life 
is completely in their hands; yet he fearlessly 
confronts the subtle agent of mischief: "Did I 
not tell you, some clays ago, that there is only one 
way of salvation, and the Saviour that way ? All 
men, whether white or black or brown, must come 
to him if they would be saved, must feel that they 
are sinners and seek forgiveness of him. Now, 



1 "I make no pretensions," he said, "to false heroism, but 
am by nature as timid as a dove. My trust is altogether in God. 
Never yet has he put me to shame, but always granted me the 
courage and comfort I need." 



lect.vii.] HAEDSHIPS AND PEKILS. 301 

what kind of a god is your god ? By what attri- 
butes do you recognize him?" Wangomen was 
silent. " If you cannot tell me," continued Zeis- 
berger, " I will tell you. The Devil is your god. 
You preach the Devil to the Indians ; you are the 
servant of the Devil, who is the father of lies ; and, 
being the servant of the Devil, the father of lies, 
you preach lies and deceive the Indians." The 
false prophet is confounded. The herald of truth 
then tenderly adds : " There is yet time ; the 
Saviour grants you grace. If you will turn to 
him, you may yet obtain salvation. But beware ! 
Delay not! Hasten to save your poor soul!" 1 
See him in the Valley of the Tuscarawas, Ohio. 
Wyandots are shooting down the domestic ani- 
mals. Plunder of the mission-house and destruc- 
tion of the place have been determined upon by 
the savages. Zeisberger orders the chapel bell 
rung as for usual morning service. The Delaware 
converts assemble, and sing a hymn in their own 
language. In the course of his address which fol- 
lows, the self-possessed, heroic missionary says: 
"My brethren, our present situation, in some re- 
spects, is indeed unparalleled. We are surrounded 
by a body of heathen ; by enemies to the glorious 
gospel ; by those who threaten to take our lives if 
we do not go with them and make them our near 
neighbors. Nevertheless we trust in the Lord and 

1 Life and Times of Zeisberger, 334. 



302 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vn. 

submit to our fate. He will not forsake us. We 
will quietly await whatever he permits. We will 
not defend our lives by force of arms; for that 
would be putting ourselves on a level with the 
heathen, and we are the children of God. Neither 
will we hate our enemies. They know not what 
they do. We are Christians, and will therefore 
rather pray for them, that the Lord God may open 
their eyes and turn their hearts, that they may re- 
pent and be saved. Perhaps we may yet see some 
of those who are here now, seeking Christ and join- 
ing his holy church, against which the gates of hell 
shall not prevail." z 

Zeisberger performed services not unimportant 
in behalf of his adopted country. Not only did 
he act as Government interpreter at the General 
Congress held with the Indian tribes in 1761, 2 
but, in 1776, he secured the neutrality of the 
Delawares; and at Fort Pitt he was instrumental 
in preventing an Indian Avar (1769). The value 
of this service was acknowledged by several of 
the American generals. 3 



1 Life and Times of Zeisberger, 502. 

2 At Easton, Pennsylvania. 

3 Generals Broadhead, Hand, Irvine and Neville — by one of 
them, General Richard Butler, in these terms : " Had the chiefs 
of the Delaware nation, together with the Christian Indians, 
pursued a different course than that which they adopted, all 
joined the enemy and taken up the hatchet against the Ameri- 
can people, it would have cost the United States much blood 



leot.vii.] LITERARY LABORS. 303 

In early life, Zeisberger became fairly proficient 
in the Latin language ; and besides his vernacu- 
lar, the German, he was acquainted with the 
Dutch, and was at home in the English ; he spoke 
the Delaware fluently; had mastered the Mo- 
hawk, and could use several dialects of the Iro- 
quois tribes. His literary labors were far from 
unimportant — labors which surpassed those of 
any other man in the last century toward the 
development of the Delaware language and the 
Onondaga dialect of the Iroquois. Among those 
in the former tongue which were printed are, 
A Delaware and English Spelling-Book ; * A Col- 
lection of Hymns, being translations from the 
German; 2 Sermons to Children ; 3 A Treatise, by 
Bishop Spangenberg, translated (1803) ; and The 
History of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.* 
In the library of the American Philosophical So- 
ciety, at Philadelphia, may be seen the manu- 



and treasure to have withstood them and checked their prog- 
ress, besides weakening our already feeble armies on the 
seaboard by draining them of troops for the Western service, 
and this might have proved fatal to the cause." 

1 With an Appendix containing a Church Litany, the Ten 
Commandments, etc., 1777. Second edition, 1806. 

2 With Litanies, 1803. Second edition, 1847. 

3 Seventeen in number, 1803. 

4 1821, in the words of Scripture, as arranged by the Rev. 
Samuel Lieberkiihn, M.A. There is also A Verbal Biegungen der 
Chippewayer. It appeared in Vater's Analeckten der Sprach* 
kunde, Leipzig, 1821. 



304 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.vii. 

scripts, besides other philological aids, such as 
grammars and ^ vocabularies, Zeisberger's Lexi- 
con of the Gierman and Onondaga Languages, 
which fills seven volumes ; while in the library 
of Harvard College may be seen a trunk, pro- 
vided by the late Hoil. Edward Everett, con- 
taining fourteen manuscripts, handsomely bound, 
also at his expense. 1 

It was at Goshen, on the west bank of the 
Tuscarawas, in Ohio, the last Indian town found- 
ed by Zeisberger, that this apostolic man spent 
his later years. In the midst of great pain he 
said : " The Saviour is near. Perhaps he will 
soon call and take me home." During his 
last sickness, it was soothing to him, as Indian 
converts, grouped round his bed, sung in their 
native Delaware from his Irymn-book. On the 
17th of November, 1808, the chapel bell was 
tolled; the adult Indians of the place gathered 
at his couch, sung of the Redeemer and of 
heaven, till the venerated patriarch fell asleep 



1 George Fabricius, a University alumnus, who was killed 
in an Indian massacre (1775), translated several parts of the 
Scriptures into the Delaware language ; Schmick translated 
the history of our Lord's sufferings into Mohegan, as well as 
litanies and certain hymns, and short accounts of other Mora- 
vian missions; and Pyrlasus translated German hymns into 
the Mohegan, the beginning of a collection, for use in divine 
worship. Philological contributions from his pen, still unpub- 
lished, are deposited in the library of the American Philosophi- 
cal Society, at Philadelphia. 



lbct.vii.] zeisberger's death. 305 

in Jesus ; and then they sobbed aloud. He had 
reached his eighty-eighth year, 1 and had seen 
sixty-two years of missionary labor. No white 
man ever preached the gospel among Indians 
for so long a time, or under trials and discour- 
agements so great. During the last twoscore 
years of his life, he was never absent from his 
flock for any length of time, and visited friends 
in the Middle States only twice. Estimating a 
missionary by the courage, skill, devotedness and 
perseverance which he shows, and by the priva- 
tion which he endures, David Zeisberger's name 
is entitled to a place among those who head 
the long roll of evangelical worthies. Is it cred- 
itable to the intelligence of religious commu- 
nities in America that no more is known regard- 
ing him? 



1 There were other instances of longevity among Moravian 
missionaries to the Indians, as John Peter Kluge, who died 
in his eighty-first year (1849 ) ; John George Jungmann and 
Adam Grube, who died the same year as Zeisberger, respec- 
tively eighty-one and ninety-two. 



20 



LECTURE VIII. 

NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS, 

CONCLUDED. 



NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS, 

CONCLUDED. 



Mokaviaist labors among the North-American 
Indians were not an isolated enterprise of en- 
thusiastic individuals. However slightly appre- 
ciated by the English colonists of that day, this 
movement filled a large place in the hearts and 
prayers of a little community in Central Europe. 
Bishops resident in this countty, as Hehl, Ett- 
wein and Seidel, gave much attention to mis- 
sionary work. Able men came over as visitors, 
partly or wholly in the interest of this work — 
Nitschmann, a native of the same place as Zeis- 
berger, and the first Bishop of the Renewed 
Moravian Church; Cammerhoff, an alumnus of 
the University of Jena, well acquainted with the 
church fathers and with the history of philoso- 
phy ; Bohler, who studied at the Universities of 
Jena and Leipzig, who crossed the Atlantic seven 
times, and to whom instrumentally John Wesley 
owed his conversion ; Losldel, author of a history 
of these missionary labors ; and Spangenberg, 
who had been a professor at Halle, well known 
as an author, a scholar, a man of wisdom, and a 

(309) 



310 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, viii. 

man of affairs. Other personages of note also 
crossed the Atlantic for a similar purpose — the 
Baron John von Watteville, a graduate at Jena, 
who visited stations in the Indian country, was 
adopted among the Iroquois, and, on his second 
visit to America (1784), remained three years ; 
as well as Count Zinzendorf — accompanied by his 
daughter, the Countess Benigna, and by Anna 
Nitschmann — who made several tours, attended 
with much fatigue and hardship, among the 
native tribes, to whom he preached through an 
interpreter. In their third journey of this kind 
they were out forty-nine days, camping under 
the open heavens, in a savage wilderness. At 
Shekomeko, the Count assisted in forming the 
earliest Moravian church composed of converted 
Indians (1742). It is believed that he was the 
first white man who ever entered the Wyoming 
Valley. 

What the United Brethren effected in the way 
of civilization among aboriginal tribes was by 
no means inconsiderable. Statements relating to 
the introduction of a literature into vernacular 
tongues have already been made. To reduce a 
language to writing always implies, among Prot- 
estant missions, and not least among Moravian 
missions, the establishment of schools. Such was 
the case everywhere, so far as practicable. At 
New Salem, Northern Ohio, for instance, Zeis- 
berger opened three, in which he himself gave 



LECT.viii.] PROGRESS IK CIVILIZATION. 311 

daity instruction to a hundred pupils, some of 
them adults who were desirous of learning to 
read, and write. Christian towns were laid out 
with regularity and neatness ; and, though hunt- 
ing was not wholly abandoned, the raising of 
grain, cattle and poultry enlisted the interest 
of converts largely. Under the lead of the 
missionary just named, thirteen villages sprang 
up, where tokens of a condition greatly improved 
upon the wild native state soon showed them- 
selves. The purchaser of their improvements 
at New Gnadenhiitten in Michigan, for which 
four hundred dollars were paid, declared that 
the Christian Indians had effected more in three 
years than the French settlers had in twenty. 1 
When, at an earlier date (1781), they had been 
compelled to abandon Salem in the Tuscarawas 
Valley, Ohio, they left behind rich plantations, 
with five thousand bushels of unharvested corn, 
hundreds of young cattle, gardens stocked with 
vegetables, and all their implements of industry. 
In each of the three settlements thus left was 
a commodious house for worship. The chapel 
at Schonbrunn could receive five hundred per- 
sons, and still was often too small to accommo- 
date all who wished to worship there (1775). 
The religious prosperity of that place particu- 
larly became known throughout the Northwest, 

1 Life and Times of Zeisberger, 589. 



312 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

and was the wonder of traders and other white 
visitors. That, it is true, was one of the palmy 
periods. 

Seasons of marked spiritual interest occurred. 
Considering the thoroughly savage state of the 
Indians, their characteristic reserve and stoical 
habits, it is specially a matter of surprise that 
revivals should take place among them. Soon 
after the settlement had been begun at Machiwi- 
hilusing (1765), Zeisberger writes: "For sev- 
eral months a great revival has been prevailing 
among the wild Indians who visit here. All 
those who attend our services are deeply im- 
pressed, and cannot hear too much of the Sav- 
iour. It often happens, while I preach, that the 
power of the gospel takes such hold of them 
that they tremble with emotion and shake with 
fear, until consciousness is nearly gone, and they 
seem to be on the point of fainting." 1 Strange 
phenomenon, indeed, was it to see these wild 
men of the woods weeping under the influence 
of divine truth. They came from far and near; 
and, as on the day of Pentecost different nation- 
alities were represented, so Mohawks, Cayugas, 
Senecas, Nanticokes and Wampanoags now " heard 
the wonderful works of God." Afterwards, our 
missionary acquired such influence over the Mon- 
seys, at their town, Friedensstadt, beyond the 



1 Life and Times of Zeisberger, 313. 



lect.viii.] NATIVE ASSISTANTS. 313 

Alleghanies, that he was naturalized among them, 
and allowed to preach the gospel with great 
freedom (1770). An awakening occurred; meet- 
ings for inquiry were held every evening, some- 
times continuing till midnight; and conversions 
took place, children also being wrought upon. 
Two years later, similar interest was manifested 
at the Delaware capital. Four years go by, and 
a season of general interest begins among the 
children in the Tuscarawas Valley (1776). After 
a decade or more, New Salem, on the shore of 
Lake Erie, was the scene of a pervading revival 
(1788). Delawares, Chippewas, Ottawas, and a 
sprinkling of Wyandots, crowd to church. Yet 
another decade goes over them, and a special 
visitation of grace is experienced by Zeisberger's 
colony, their settlement then being at Fairfield, 
Canada (1797). Profound seriousness prevailed; 
there were deep searchings of heart, accompanied 
by confession and manifest penitence. 

Advance in mission work, whatever the method 
and whatever the field, is to be estimated partly 
by the character of native helpers who are raised 
up. Did the United Brethren witness any en- 
couraging development of the aboriginal capacity 
in this direction? That question has already re- 
ceived answer in part by the case of Tschoop, 
one of the two earliest converts, whose trans- 
formation is hardly surpassed by any other in 
the wdiole range of mission history. Contem- 



314 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.viii. 

porary with him was Nicodemus, a man of dis- 
tinguished character, and his conversion a miracle 
of grace. 1 As a heathen, he was exceeded by 
none in evil practices, and was much given to 
drunkenness. From a turbulent spirit, he became 
patient and lowly ; in his walk and conversation 
an example to all, so that whoever knew him 
before, beheld him now with amazement. By 
degrees he became much enlightened in the 
truths of the gospel, and was appointed Elder 
of the congregation at Gnadenhiitten, in which 
office he was universally respected. Once, while 
looking at the mill, he addressed the missionary : 
" Brother, I discover something that rejoices my 
heart. I have seen the great wheel and many 
little ones; every one was in motion and seemed 
all alive ; but suddenly all stopped, and the mill 
was as if dead. I then thought, surely all de- 
pends upon one wheel; if the water runs upon 
that, everything else is alive ; but, when that 
ceases to flow, all appears dead. Just so it is 
with my heart ; it is dead as the wheel ; but, as 
soon as Jesus' blood flows upon it, it gets life, 
and sets everything in motion, and, the whole 
man being governed by it, it becomes evident 
that there is life throughout. But, when the 
heart is removed from the crucified Jesus, it dies 
gradually, and at length all life ceases." 2 That 

1 Baptized 1742. 

2 Moravian Missions to North- American Indians, 104. 



lect.viii.] NATIVE ASSISTANTS. 315 

was by no means a solitary instance. Valuable 
men from among the Dela wares also came for- 
ward, who preached with boldness. Such was 
Anthony. 1 An orator by nature, he gave testi- 
mony for years in a consistent life. Zeisberger 
says: "Anthony was as eager to bring souls to 
Christ as a hunter's hound is eager to chase the 
deer." Take a single- specimen. Glikkikan — a 
warrior who has won fame in many a battle 
among the Indians, and in the contest between 
the French and the English, whose reputation 
as a speaker is unsurpassed, who has silenced 
the Jesuits in an encounter with them — comes 
to the mission-house at Lawunakhannek, on the 
Alleghany River, and for the express purpose of 
vanquishing the Christian teacher in argument. 
Anthony opens : " My friends, hear me ; I will 
tell you a great thing. God made the heavens, 
the earth, and all things that are in them ; noth- 
ing exists which God has not made." After 
pausing a little, he continues : " God has created 
us ; but who of us knows his Creator ? Not one ! 
I tell you the truth, not one ! For we have fallen 
away from God ; we are polluted creatures ; our 
minds are darkened by sin." Here he sits down, 
and, after the Indian manner, is silent a long time. 
Suddenly rising, he exclaims : " That God, who 
made all things and created us, came into the 

1 Baptized 1750 ; died 1773, in his seventy-seventh year 



316 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

world in the form and fashion of a man. Why 
did he thus come into the world ? Think of 
this ! " After a while he resumes : " I will show 
you. God became a man, and took upon him 
flesh and blood, in order that, as man, he might 
reconcile the world unto himself. By his bitter 
death on the cross, he procured for us life and 
eternal salvation, redeeming us from sin, from 
death, and from the power of the Devil." Glik- 
kikan had nothing to say in the way of contro- 
versy, but urged his people to go and hear the 
gospel. 1 He soon avowed the purpose of em- 
bracing Christianity himself; counting the cost, 
he took the step deliberately, became an efficient 
coadjutor of the mission, and finally perished in 
the massacre of Christian Indians at Gnadenhiit- 
ten. 

Other chiefs of note came under the saving 
power of truth. Among those was Shikellimy 
(died 1748), an Iroquois sachem, father of the 
celebrated Logan ; Echpalawchund, a noted Dela- 
ware chief, whose conversion caused a great out- 
burst of anger in his tribe (died 1774) ; and 
Netawatwes (died 1776), head sachem of the 
Dela wares. But for the great change in him, 
his people, in common with the other tribes, 
would no doubt have lifted the hatchet against 
the neighboring colonists, and have fearfully en- 



1 Life of Zeisberger, 356. 



lect.viii.j HEATHEN PREACHERS. 317 

hanced the losses and sufferings of white settlers. 
Another in that list was Gelelemend, 1 a grandson 
of Netawatwes, who came to the headship of the 
nation and remained faithful to the Americans. 
Nor was it the youthful and middle-aged alone 
who embraced Christianity. Keposh, who had 
been head chief of the Delaware nation, received 
baptism when near eighty; and the grandfather 
of a chief called George Rex was admitted to 
the church at one hundred years of age. 

" Priests too were obedient to the faith." About 
the middle of the last century there arose, especially 
among the Delaware Indians, a class of men claim- 
ing to be prophets, who, like Mohammed and Swe- 
denborg, pretended to be translated at times to 
heaven, and to have immediate revelations from 
the Great Spirit. It was manifestly a device to 
counteract the influence of Christianity, from 
which some ideas were borrowed, in order to super- 
sede it. The magicians would fain " do so with 
their enchantments." At first they taught a mor- 
ality superior to that prevailing among their peo- 
ple, but soon failed in practice themselves. They 
anticipated the Mormonism of our days, alleging 
that on their part polygamy was a work of mercy, 
because union with such eminent friends of the 
Great Spirit as they were would contribute to 
the salvation of women. Another dogma taught 

1 Baptized 1788; died 1811, aged seventy-four. 



318 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

by these Manicheans of the woods was, that, in 
order to be saved, one must beat out his sins with 
twelve rods of as many different kinds of wood, 
beginning at the feet and working upward, till 
all iniquities issued suddenly from the neck; or 
else one must completely expel sins by twelve 
various emetics. It is as suggestive as it is ludi- 
crous to find what a hold this absurd asceticism 
gained upon rude minds, and how many savages 
set themselves to attain sanctification by switches, 
sinless perfection by exhaustive vomiting. Among 
the leaders of that pestilent sect was one Papun- 
hank ; r but, when Zeisberger preached three days in 
succession to this Simon Magus of Machiwihilu- 
sing and his followers, they were deeply wrought 
upon. Turning to him, the missionary exclaimed, 
" Brother, what have you to say to this people ? " 
" Nothing," was his answer, " except that they 
shall listen to their new teachers." Papunhank 
became a new man ; his penitence was profound, 
his distress of mind waxing so great that he could 
neither eat nor sleep. When the time for baptism 
came (June 17, 1763), in the presence of his former 
deluded followers, he uttered this voluntary con- 
fession: "The Saviour has made me feel my mis- 
ery and utterly depraved state. I used to preach 
to you. I imagined myself a good man ; I did not 
know that I was the greatest sinner among you 

1 Died 1775. 



lect.viii.] POWER OF TRUTH. 319 

all. Brothers, forgive and forget everything I 
have said and done." He was afterwards a faith- 
ful assistant of the mission. 

As is the case, no doubt, wherever evangelistic 
work continues for a length of time, some are sav- 
ingly reached by the truth who never come to be 
known to the missionary; so it has been, we may 
well suppose, among the red men for whom Mo- 
ravians labored. Some also, as in older Chris- 
tian countries, without becoming church-members, 
become comparatively valuable members of the 
community. Such notably was Paxnous, a Sha- 
wanese chief (whose wife confessed Christ), who 
remained faithful to the colonies ; and White 
Eyes, a Delaware captain, whose ability as a man, 
good will to the mission, and fidelity to the colon- 
ists, caused his death to be deeply deplored (1778). 

But there were so many men in the last and the 
previous century, to say nothing of the present 
day, who accounted the Indian hardly a human 
being, who practically denied that he was capable 
of salvation or was worth saving, that it may be 
well to glance at the red man's experiences when 
gospel truth came to bear upon him. Did his 
heart and life indicate a share in our common 
humanity and in the great salvation ? Torpid as 
were their sensibilities and conscience, yet the 
felt sense of guiltiness could move them when 
nothing else would. " Brethren," said* an aged 
chief at Gnadenhutten, " we are altogether buried 



320 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vm. 

in sin; have patience with us; in the course of a 
year or two, a change may take place. We are 
like colts in training. Your words please us 
much. We feel something in our hearts, and, 
though we do not comprehend it all, we shall 
understand it by degrees, but our motions are 
slow." One haughty war-captain, after attend- 
ing church and listening to a discourse on the 
heinousness of sin and the grace of Jesus Christ, 
went through the village to his hut sobbing aloud 
in the presence of his associates. Said another 
Indian: "Whenever I saw a man shed tears, I 
used to doubt his being a man. I would not have 
wept if my enemies had even cut the flesh from 
my bones, so hard was my heart at that time ; 
that I now weep is of God, who has softened the 
hardness of my heart." 

Was the conviction such as led to a reformed 
life? The chief of the Cayugas told Zeisberger 
that he had seen many Indians baptized by the 
French in Canada, but never found the least dif- 
ference between them and the unbaptized. With 
some exceptions, that could not be said of those 
who had received the ordinance at the hands of 
Moravian missionaries. The appointment of over- 
seers of morals, and the rules adopted by converts, 
are suggestive. Take a selection from them : " We 
will know of no other God, nor worship any other, 
but him who has created us and redeemed us with 
his most precious blood." " We will rest from all 



lect.viii.] CHRISTIAN LIFE. 321 

labor on Sundaj^s, and attend the usual meetings 
on that day for divine service." " We will honor 
father and mother, and support them in age and 
distress." " We will renounce all juggleries, lies, 
and deceits of Satan." " We will not permit any 
rum or spirituous liquors to be bought in our town. 
If strangers or traders happen to bring any, the 
helpers (national assistants) are to take it into 
their possession, and take care not to deliver it to 
them until they set off again." "None of the in- 
habitants shall run into debt with the traders, nor 
receive goods on commission for traders, without 
the consent of the national assistants." 

When the colony of Christian Indians were in 
the neighborhood of Detroit (1786), the traders of 
that place found them strictly honest, and never 
refused them credit, being sure of punctual pay- 
ment ; and, though some had run heavily in debt, 
still, before leaving the neighborhood, by stren- 
uous effort, they had discharged ever}^ obligation. 
Years previous to that (1750), so changed were 
Bishop Cammerhoff's "brown sheep," as he used 
to call his converts, that the neighboring warriors 
demanded, "What have you done to our brothers 
that they are so entirely different from us, and 
from what they used to be ? What is this bap- 
tism which has made them turn from our feasts 
and dances, and shun all our ways ? " 

How did these men, so lately men of blood, 
men of unbridled revenge, stand the test of re- 

21 



322 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

proaches and injuries, one of the severer tests 
of professing Christians, whatever their complex- 
ion, and whatever the place they hold in the 
scale of civilization ? On a brave warrior's receiv- 
ing baptism, his indignant chief denounced him : 
"And have you gone to the Christian teachers, 
from our very council? What do you want of 
them ? Do you hope to get a white skin ? Not 
so much as one of your feet will turn white ; 
how, then, can your whole skin be changed? 
Were you not a brave man? Were you not 
an honorable councilor? Did you not sit at 
my side in this house, with a blanket before you, 
and a pile of wampum belts on it, and help me 
direct the affairs of our nation ? And now you 
despise all this. You think you have found 
something better. Wait ! in good time you will 
discover how miserably you have been deceived." 
Glikkikan answered: "You are right; I have 
joined the Brethren. Where they go I will go ; 
where they lodge I will lodge. Nothing shall 
separate me from them. Their people shall be 
my people, and their God my God." x The same 
man, when seized by enraged savages, said to 
them : " There was a time when I never would 
have yielded myself prisoner to any man ; but 
that was when I lived in heathenish darkness and 
knew not God. Now I am converted to him, I 

1 Life of Zeisberger, 362. 



lect.viii.] CONSTANCY. 323 

suffer willingly for Christ's sake." So saying, 
lie allowed himself to be bound and led away 
amidst fearful scalping-whoops. Instances might 
be given of fervent prayer for enemies. A spirit 
of special and more general supplication was 
witnessed. It is an interesting circumstance that, 
even in the earliest Moravian labors at Sheko- 
meko (1743), daily meetings were held and a 
monthly pra3 T er-day established, when accounts 
of mission progress in different parts of the world 
were communicated, and petitions offered in be- 
half of all men — occasions that were peculiarly 
enjoyed by the Indians. Should not devout de- 
sires and efforts for the spread of Christian truth 
be, at the present time, more often looked for as 
evidence of Christian standing? 

Not unfrequently did the baptized natives, and 
that, too, outside the circle of professional helpers, 
show commendable firmness and boldness in their 
new position. " My people," said a Nanticoke 
chieftain, "have, indeed, taken away my belts 
and strings of wampum; but they were obliged 
to leave me that understanding which God has 
given me ; and I may still make use of it, as I 
please, to do good." At another time, one ob- 
served : " That I have lost all my property and 
am poor, that my cattle are dead, that I must 
suffer hunger — all this I bear and complain not ; 
but that our enemies are about to deprive us 
of our teachers, and keep food from our souls — - 



324 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

this I canDot bear; it deeply wounds my heart. 
They shall, however, see that I will have no 
communion with them, and will not be enticed 
back to heathenism." 1 When an associate was 
trying to dissuade a convert from saying any- 
thing about his new religion, lest it might cost 
his life, he replied : " If my life is in danger, I 
will the more cheerfully witness of the truth. 
Do you imagine that a baptized Indian fears 
your sorceries as he did when he was a heathen, 
and that he will hesitate to make known what 
the Saviour has done for him and for all men? 
No ! While I live, I will not hold my peace, 
but proclaim salvation. This is the command 
of God." 2 In the light of such testimony, what 
shall be thought of the atrocious utterance — 
" There is no good Indian but a dead In- 
dian ? " 

Can any one question the genuineness of these 
evidences that, through the agency of the United 
Brethren, Christianity took a firm hold of the 
red man? During the four years of his labor, 
Bishop Cammerhoff (who died 1751) alone bap- 
tized eighty-nine converts. Up to 1772, the 
catalogue showed a list of seven hundred and 
twenty persons who had been introduced into 
the visible church; 3 and the Moravians were 

1 Life of Zeisberger, 534. 

2 Ibid, 442. 

3 Loskiel, Geschichte der Mission, 774. 



lect.viii.] CULMINATING PERIOD. 325 

much more anxious to secure genuine conver- 
sions than to swell the number of converts re- 
ported. 1 At the close of 1775, there were four 
hundred and fourteen believing Indians who 
lived at three neighboring settlements in Ohio 
alone. Frequent accessions to the church took 
place, and the members made gratifying progress 
in religious knowledge and life. Indeed, at that 
time, Christianity was coming to have a dominant 
influence among the Delawares. The Grand 
Council passed an edict not only granting full 
liberty to the new religion, but recommending 
its adoption by the whole nation, as well as other 
enabling and confirmatory edicts. The fickle 
and apostate Monseys felt the subduing grace 
of God. Nor was it one of the least striking 
proofs of what the gospel can effect, that a race 
of savage hunters were accepting the restraints 
of civilized life and the demands of regulated 
industry. There was an encouraging prospect 
that the entire Delaware people would in a few 
years become truly Christianized. 

If then, it will be asked, such a hope had any 
reasonable grounds, if the meeting-house and the 
school-house evinced the zeal and tact of Mora- 
vian missionaries wherever they planted them- 



1 Dass unsere Missiondre nicht sowohl einen grossen Haufen 
getauften Heiden, als vielmehr wahrhaftig glaubige Seelen Christo 
zufiirhen wollen. Ibid, 775. 



326 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.yiii. 

selves, what became of the fruits? What was the 
issue of all the toils, privations and successes 
of these Christian philanthropists? An answer 
is at hand. We have only to keep in mind the 
character of the red man, and the condition of 
that period, to find a solution most sad and 
painfully adequate. The Indian was a sullen, 
apathetic being, with no government of any kind, 
domestic or otherwise, and with no laws except 
those of custom. He was a fierce, overgrown, 
ungoverned youth; and, by immemorial usage, 
butchery had been his element. Not the white 
wampum of peace, but the red wampum of war, 
was his favorite symbol. He was a brutal savage, 
sternly vindictive and cruel. "Not one in a 
thousand has the spirit of a man," says the char- 
itable, heavenly-minded Brainerd. Contact with 
white men generally led to the imitation of noth- 
ing so soon as their vices, and with eminent speed 
their intemperance. As is the case everywhere 
among ruder races, ardent spirits fearfully mad- 
dened and imbruted the Indian, proving more 
destructive than their constant wars. Even the 
better class of white men, with whom thev had 
dealings, were largely blind to their own incon- 
sistencies, and to the demoniacal tyranny of this 
agent over creatures possessing little power of 
resistance. When the sachems of the Iroquois 
Confederacy met Sir William Johnson at Onon- 
daga in 1753, he declaimed with earnestness 



lect.viii.] INDIAN CHARACTER. 327 

against the vice of intemperance ; then, at the 
close of negotiations, distributed rum so freely 
that the concourse became intoxicated, and Zeis- 
berger and his companion had to flee for their 
lives. 1 What, then, would naturally be, what 
in point of fact was, the influence of colonial 
land-jobbers, traders and hunters, who were so 
wholly destitute of principle ? Debased savages 
became yet more debased. Between white des- 
peradoes and the victims of their unscrupulous 
cupidity, mutual distrust was a fixed result. 
" Oh, certainly," retorted a Shawanese, with tell- 
ing irony, "Oh, certainly, they are better than 
we ! — wiser in teaching men to get drunk ; wiser 
in overreaching men ; wiser in swindling men of 
their land ; wiser in defrauding them of all their 
possessions." Upon deeds of violence retaliation 
would ensue, till, in the border-land of frontier life, 
the sentiment prevailed that an Indian had no more 
soul than a buffalo, and he was shot with scarcely 
less compunction than the panther or the bear. 
Now, what can reasonably be demanded of a mere 
handful of Germans, however faithful in their 
endeavors to evangelize such a race, under such 
circumstances ? Shall it be claimed of Chris- 
tianity that it produce immediately, upon such 
subjects, those effects for which elsewhere genera- 
tions are needed? 

1 Life of Zeisberger, 211, 212. 



328 MOKAVIAST MISSIONS. Clect.viii. 

There were yet other considerations pecul- 
iarly unfavorable for the moral elevation of the 
red men. One was the frequent removals to 
which the settlements of Christian Indians were 
subject. We have seen how the persecuting 
legislation of New York drove the missionaries 
from their field in that colony to Pennsylvania, 
and that many of their converts followed them ; 
but the French and Indian War gave rise to 
suspicions and false accusations, which occa- 
sioned their being disarmed and taken to Phila- 
delphia, where, with great difficulty, they were 
shielded from the violence of an armed mob, and 
where one half of them died. An effort to re- 
move them thence to New York failed, the Gov- 
ernor issuing strict orders that they should not 
set foot within the colony. Returning to their 
old home at Nain, in Lehigh County, they were 
not allowed to remain there, but were sent 
(1765) to Machiwihilusing, a five weeks' journey 
through forests, swamps and rivers, women and 
children being at times famished. They were 
compelled to migrate successively from the 
Valley of the Delaware to that of the Susque- 
hanna, from the Susquehanna to the Valley of the 
Alleghany, thence a hundred miles west from Pitts- 
burg into Ohio (1772). After eight years of indus- 
try and of religious prosperity, they are suddenly 
seized, and as prisoners marched to Sandusky. 
Thereafter they effect a settlement at New Gna- 



LECT.VIII.] WARS. 329 

denhutten. To another resting-place, where these 
pilgrims could enjoy only "a night lodge," they 
gave the name of Pilgerruh ; but the peace afford- 
ed them at New Salem, in Erie County, was 
short-lived ; and they were compelled to migrate 
into Canada (1791). Their four years' stay in 
Michigan was a cruel exile. The erection of 
chapels for worship, titles to lands, agricultural 
and other improvements, gave them nowhere any 
guarantee of permanencj^. Removals alone could 
be depended upon. Had all the circumstances 
attending such changes been favorable, how much 
of civilization and Christian life could have been 
effected ! What growth or fruitage do we look 
for in a tree that is often rudely plucked up, and 
in every instance imperfectly replanted? But 
their migrations were compulsory; no alluring 
prospect beyond personal safety, and very seldom 
even that, drew them from one spot to another. 
It was an unresisting little community, with its 
Christian teachers, running the gauntlet between 
files of Indian and white enemies. The only 
wonder is that every vestige of improvement was 
not effaced. 

Inter arma silent leges, observes Cicero. The 
Moravian missionaries and the Christian Dela- 
wares found repeatedly that natural and civic 
rights avail but little under martial law, which 
is often merely the law of arbitrary violence. 
It was war, as we have seen, which broke up 



330 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

the first Moravian settlement and missionary- 
effort in Georgia. For nearly three decades, 
from 1755 onward, there was no lasting relief — 
there was only partial and local relief — from the 
apprehension or actual storm of conflict. The 
French and Indian War, the Conspiracy of Pon- 
tiac, the protracted Pennamite and Yankee broil 
in the Valley of Wyoming, and the long struggle 
of our Revolutionary period, all told with amaz- 
ing effect upon Christian labor. The very day 
of Braddock's defeat (July 9, 1775) found Zeis- 
berger and Seidel carrying food to the famished 
red men of Wyoming. The eighth of September 
the same year was the date of Count Dieskau's 
defeat near Lake St. George, and of an enthusi- 
astic missionary conference, consisting of four 
bishops, sixteen missionaries and eighteen female 
assistants, at Bethlehem, who pledged themselves 
to pursue their evangelistic labors so long as 
possible, in spite of wars and rumors of wars. 1 
The same hour that Massachusetts soldiers w^ere 
engaged in battle at Lexington, April nineteenth, 
David Zeisberger and his assistants were in the 
mission-house at Schonbrunn, Ohio, examining 
candidates for church-membership. The Breth- 
ren held on, faithful in their work of love, their 
devotion to the best interests of these men 
of the woods ; but the very fidelity and quiet 

Life of 'Zeisberger, 222. 



LECT. VIII.] 



WARS. 331 



Christian trust of the Moravians were misinter- 
preted, and they were again accused, as they had 
been a dozen years before in Eastern New York, 
and as David Brainerd was at Crossweeksung, 
of being in secret league with the French. 1 They 
shared the frequent penalty of peacemakers, the 
distrust of both sides, in nearly every contest. 
They espoused the cause of neither ; they were 
non-combatants; their principles and feelings 
forbade alliance with any party as a war party. 
In the heat of an armed strife, suspicion was 
easily inflamed into hatred ; the most unfounded 
rumors took wing; artful letters to their dis- 
credit were forged. The frontier position of the 
Christian Indians, often on the line between 
hostile forces, made them all the more naturally 
objects of distrust, and at length of wanton ill- 
treatment. In the Revolutionary War, British 
intrigue stirred up savage allies to massacre 
white colonists, and to root out the doubtful 
Delawares. Again, in the last war between the 
United States and Great Britain, upon an un- 
proven rumor, the troops of General Harrison, 
victorious in the battle of the Thames (1813), 
plundered and burned the village of Christian 

1 Bishop Spangenberg wrote to Count Zinzendorf in Septem- 
ber, 1755 : Das Land is voll Furcht una 1 SchrecJcen. In der Ge- 
neinde ists Licht. Wir leben dabey aiiserlich in guter Ruhe, und 
werden des Heilandes Nah-und Daseyn unveranderlich inne. Risler, 
Leben Spangenberg, 313. 



332 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. viii* 

Indians at Fairfield, Canada; mission-liouse and 
chapel vanished in the flames, and converts fled 
to the woods. 

Neutrals in the neighborhood of belligerents 
are always exposed to injuries; but it was not 
alone to such evils as are inevitably incident 
to war that the mission and Christian Indians 
were subjected. It was by no means strange 
that, with the experience of border life — fre- 
quent murders and occasional war — there should 
grow up a feeling of dread and of vindictiveness. 
When the mere name of Indian would cause the 
wives of white settlers to turn pale, and children 
to cling to their mothers' necks, it could hardly 
fail that many a husband and father should come 
to think that extermination of the red men was 
a required condition of safety. Reason ceased 
to rule, humane feelings withered, terror de- 
moralized, character degenerated, till the Indians, 
without distinction, were rather commonly pro- 
nounced outlaws, and to shoot them was deemed 
a public service. Some men of religious habits 
persuaded themselves that the aborigines were 
only Canaanites and doomed to be cut off ; men 
destitute of religious convictions deemed it an 
impertinence to be asked to justify their fanatical 
fear and fanatical hatred. Hence the unoffend- 
ing became victims of massacre. Hostile Indians 
led the way in this horrid work. The twenty- 
fourth of November, 1755, is a dark day in 



lect. vino MASSACRES. 333 

the calendar of colonial and Moravian history. 
The defeat of General Braddock, four months 
previously, had become known far and wide to 
the savage tribes in league with the French, who 
now rushed into Pennsylvania, carrying fire and 
slaughter to the frontier settlements. A mile 
from Gnaclenhiitten, on the other side of the 
Mahony Creek, was a settlement of Christian 
Indians with their white teachers. The hour for 
their evening meal has come. The tramp of men 
is heard, and one of the mission family rises from 
the table, opens the door to see who were there, 
when instantly a terrible war-whoop and dis- 
charge of rifles are heard, and Martin Nitsch- 
mann falls dead. The firing continues, and his 
wife soon falls. Four others are at once fatally 
pierced. A few, escaping by the trap-door into 
a loft, have some minutes' respite; but the 
house is soon in flames. Mrs. Sensemann, ex- 
claiming, "Dear Saviour! Just as I expected!" 
is stifled. Gottlieb Anders, his wife and infant 
perish also. Two only escape the flames and 
bullets by leaping from a window at a favorable 
moment. Fabricius, who attempted the same, 
is soon tomahawked and scalped. Ten persons 
perished ; Susanna Nitschmann would fain have 
shared the same fate rather than captivity among 
brutish Indians at Tioga. The most prejudiced 
white detractors could not but admit that the 
massacre and conflagration of that night vindi- 



334 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

cated Moravians from the aspersion of a secret 
alliance with the enemy. 

Alas that, for such diabolical scenes, aboriginal 
savages are not alone responsible ! An Indian, 
with his little child, wife, and another woman, 
who had belonged to the mission village of 
Wechquetank, on their journey were sleeping in 
a barn, and depending upon the protection of 
one Captain Wetterhold and his company, quar- 
tered at the same place (1763) ; but their pro- 
tectors fell upon them, and murdered them all, 
though the mother and child kneeled at their 
feet crying for mercy. 1 An armed mob advanced 
upon Philadelphia with the avowed purpose of 
not sparing one in the company of Christian 
Indians who were lodged there in the neighbor- 



1 The same year, there occurred another massacre of equal 
wantonness and greater magnitude. On the Conestoga Manor, 
in the neighborhood of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were a hand- 
ful of Indians, twenty in number, half -civilized, poor, and friend- 
ly to the English, as their fathers had been. But the Scotch- 
Irish of Paxton and vicinity conceived that they had a mission 
to cut off this feeble clan. A band of fifty men fell upon the 
hamlet, burned every house, and killed every Indian who could 
be found. Fourteen out of the score, happening to be absent 
at the hour of this dastardly attack, were, for safe keeping, 
lodged in Lancaster jail. Hearing of this, the same party, a 
fortnight later, galloped into town, burst open the prison door, 
and slaughtered the entire party, women and children included. 
That little Conestoga settlement was not, it is true, a mission- 
ary station; but the occurrence shows the frenzied animosity 
of the region and the period. 



lect.viii.] MASSACRES. 835 

hood for safe keeping. Scarcely had five years 
gone by when there occurred (1768) a brutal 
murder of ten inoffensive Indians in Cumberland 
County, three of them women and three children. 
But it was reserved for the Valley of the Tusca- 
rawas, in Ohio, to witness the consummate exhi- 
bition of cool and cowardly diabolism on the 
part of white men. This final massacre took 
place just at the close of our War of the Revolu- 
tion, months after the surrender of Cornwallis at 
Yorktown. The Moravian Indians in Tuscara- 
was County, by their frontier position, incurred 
naturally the suspicion of hostile powers on either 
side. They, however, maintained strict neutral- 
ity, their secret friendship being with the Ameri- 
can side ; nor is there any sufficient evidence that 
reasonable complaint could be brought against 
a single member of the community. When white 
troops of either party passed through their vil- 
lages, common hospitality was not only tight, but 
was a necessity for their own preservation. Early 
in March, 1782, a band of mounted volunteer 
militia, estimated from ninety to a hundred and 
fifty in number, from the neighborhood of Pitts- 
burg, pushed rapidly to the peaceful settlements. 
The peaceable and unsuspicious natives were en- 
gaged in the usual industries of the season. The 
first one whom the murderers met, at a little 
distance from Gnadenhutten, Joseph Schebosh, 
the son of a white man, fell under their toma- 



336 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. vm. 

hawks — yes, the tomahawks of Pennsylvanians 
— and they took his scalp as a trophy. The 
entire village was secured. The invaders pro- 
fessed friendship ; said they had come to res- 
cue the Christian Indians from their exposed 
situation ; would conduct them to a place of 
safety, where they should be well provided for ; 
and gave wampum in proof of kind intentions. 
The party were accordingly welcomed, hospitably 
entertained, friendly interchanges taking place 
through an interpreter. Similar assurances were 
made by a detachment of the militia, at the settle- 
ment of Salem. The Indians, thrown completely 
off their guard — and the more completely be- 
cause these strangers professed a pious interest 
in their welfare — placed themselves entirely in 
the hands of the soldiers, and surrendered their 
weapons. Suddenly the confiding creatures were 
all seized, crowded into two houses, and strictly 
guarded. The fate of these unresisting captives 
was submitted for decision to the militia, drawn 
up in line, their commander putting it thus: 
"Shall the Moravian Indians be taken prisoners 
to Pittsburg, or put to death ? All those in favor 
of sparing their lives, advance one step and form 
a second rank." Only sixteen men stepped out 
of the line, a large majority thus deciding in 
favor of death ! At the same time, it was decided 
to tomahawk and scalp the entire party, that 
proofs might be carried back. No protests of 



lect. viii.] MASSACRES. 337 

innocence, no appeals to well known friendly ser- 
vices, availed the helpless prisoners. They were 
allowed till the next day to prepare for execution. 
Yielding submissively, they began to pray, to 
exhort and comfort one another, and at length 
to sing. When morning came, and their eager 
enemies demanded if they would soon be ready, 
u We are ready now," was their answer ; " we 
have committed our souls to God, who has given 
us the assurance that he will receive them." 
Two and two they were tied together with a 
rope, dragged to the place of execution, slaugh- 
tered and scalped. Fourteen were felled to the 
floor by one man with a cooper's mallet, which 
he then passed to an associate ruffian, saying: 
" My arm fails me ! Go on in the same way ! I 
think I have done pretty well ! " Five of the 
slain were respectable assistants, two of whom 
had been members of David Brainerd's congre- 
gation, in New Jersey, before his decease. The 
men and boys having been thus despatched, 
women and children were next taken in the 
same manner to another house. To call it a 
savage proceeding would reflect upon the red 
men in their uncivilized state. One of the first 
among the female victims was Judith, an aged 
widow. Another was Christiana, who had lived 
with the Moravians at Bethlehem in her youth, 
who spoke English and German, and who pleaded 
with the commander in vain. The tomahawk 

22 



338 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. vm. 

and war-club, the spear and scalping-knife, did 
their work on ninety-six Indians, of whom twenty- 
seven were women and thirty-four children — 
twelve of the latter being infants. Two lads 
only escaped, one of them being stunned and 
scalped ; the other secreting himself unobserved 
in the cellar of the house where the women 
suffered, and where the blood streamed through 
the floor upon him. The militia, having accom- 
plished this butchery, gathered up their plunder, 
set fire to what they appropriately called the 
" slaughter-houses," as well as to both villages, and 
marched away, with the purpose of repeating the 
same outrage elsewhere. 

We have now followed the mission through 
thirty years or more of forced migrations, of 
wrongs and privations incident to frontier life ; 
through successive wars and successive massacres. 
Circumstances more unfavorable could hardly be 
conceived. All the conditions requisite for defeat 
seemed to conspire along its path. It was a pil- 
grim mission, a mission of vicissitudes, a maligned 
and persecuted mission, with no influential board 
to whom appeal could be made, and with no gov- 
ernmental arm to interpose a shield. Success is 
never the test of fidelity. Nothing about this 
mission is more remarkable than that, under such 
embarrassments, so much of success was achieved. 
In the course of forty-seven years (1740-1787) 
nineteen different stations were founded, though 



lect.viii.] LATER LABORS. 339 

at no one time were so many occupied. David 
Zeisberger baptized men who had once lifted the 
tomahawk to slay him. More than one fierce 
warrior, like Michael, who could maintain an en- 
gagement for six hours, keeping his post undaunt- 
edly at a tree which had over a score of musket- 
balls lodged in it, became a Christian, lived a con- 
sistent life, and his end was peace. In spite of 
the emblems scarified on his face — a snake on 
one cheek, crossed lances on the other, on the 
lower jaw a wild-boar's head, and various symbols 
of savage life — his countenance assumed an ex- 
pression of serene benignity. In the whole range 
of martyrology are there many chapters more im- 
pressive than that of the massacre at Gnadenhiit- 
ten ? And does the history of Christian missions 
present us an instance of more intrepid persistence 
in seeking the welfare of a wronged community 
amidst perils and calamities, reviled by men call- 
ing themselves Christians, yet ignorant of the 
principles, and incapable of appreciating the mo- 
tives, of Moravian missionaries ? 

The frightful massacre at Gnadenhiitten was 
the heaviest blow the work could receive. Ex- 
tinction seemed to be threatened ; decline was in- 
evitable. What people in modern times could 
more appropriately take up the lamentation of 
Israel — u They hunt our steps that we cannot go 
in our streets ; our end is near ; our days are ful- 
filled; for our end is come. Our persecutors are 



340 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.viii. 

swifter than the eagles of the heaven; they pur- 
sued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us 
in the wilderness." Yet the Brethren clung to 
the feeble remnant of converts who escaped the 
scalping-knife of savage red men and merciless 
white men. After twelve years, peculiarly unset- 
tled years of wandering, of want and of great 
trial, the little band of Christian Delawares set- 
tled at Fairfield, Canada West (1792), where the 
English Government secured to them a strip of 
land on both sides the Thames River, some dis- 
tance above its embouchure into Lake St. Clair. 1 
As before mentioned, the place was destroyed by 
American troops in 1813 ; but, two years later, 
New Fairfield 2 was built on the opposite side of 
the river, and mission work resumed. After a 
score of years (1837), a roving impulse seized a part 
of this settlement, and two thirds of the whole 
migrated to Westfield, in Kansas, two missionaries 
accompanying the party. But the usual condition 
of such wandering Indians has come upon them, 
and they are dwindling toward extinction. 

From 1798 to 1821, an effort was made to rees- 
tablish Christian work, on a tract of land granted 
by the United States Government, in the Valley of 

1 Down to 1809, the whole number of natives baptized in the 
mission was between thirteen and fourteen hundred souls. 
Heckewelder's Narrative, 418. 

2 The settlement, four miles from Bothwell, is known as 
Moravian Town. 



lect. vin.] 



LATER LABORS. 341 



the Muskingum. This enterprise, however, in 
the neighborhood of their earlier Ohio home, did 
not prove a permanent success; nor did less pro- 
tracted attempts at Pettquatting, and on the San- 
dusky; nor yet on the White River, a branch of 
the Wabash* in Illinois, where a native helper, 
Joshua, was murdered (1806). The missionaries 
were compelled to leave. Labor has been carried 
on in the Cherokee country also. Sixteen years 
before the American Board commenced their work 
among that people, United Brethren had estab- 
lished a station at Springplace, Georgia 1 (1801). 
In 1817, they gave a welcome to our missionaries, 
and in process of time, along with them and the 
remainder of that tribe, were forcibly ejected from 
the State, and conveyed beyond the Mississippi 
(1838). Two stations, New Springplace and 
Wood Mount, are still maintained by Moravians 
in the Cherokee Reservation of the Indian Ter- 
ritory. 



1 During the Indian wars, Cherokee chiefs, who were hospit- 
ably received by Moravians in North Carolina, expressed a de- 
sire to have teachers sent to their people, and the evangelizing 
of that tribe was never wholly lost sight of by the Brethren. In 
1801, A. Steiner and G. Byhan began labors at Springplace. 
The names of Gambol d and Smith also appear in the history 
of the two nourishing stations, Springplace and Ochgalogy, in 
Northern Georgia. 



LECTURE IX. 



MISSIOX TO SOUTH AFRICA 



MISSION TO SOUTH AFRICA, 



Or the three older continents, Africa has held 
the same place that Ham held among the sons of 
Noah — least known and least esteemed. Among 
the six continents of modern geography, it has 
the smallest supply of outlying islands, has no 
peninsulas, has the most monotonous coast-line, 
is nowhere penetrated by gulfs and bays. Bal- 
anced upon the equator, a nearly equal mass on 
the one side and on the other, Africa is the most 
torrid of the continents, there being vast tracts 
where the soil is like a furnace-bed, and the wind 
like a furnace-breath. On no other coast-line 
in the world can there be found a stretch of one 
thousand and one hundred miles, as from the 
mouth of the Senegal northward, without a single 
stream, large or small. Yet Africa has moun- 
tains higher than Mont Blanc, whose snow-cov- 
ered peaks defy the full force of vertical rays 
poured upon them the year round. Among the 
great divisions of the globe, this, which is five 
thousand miles in length, and as many miles in 
its greatest breadth, is the least subject to hur- 
ricanes, and suffers least from subterranean dis- 
turbance. 

(345) 



346 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

Africa is the continent of contradictions and 
historical enigmas — utter absence of rain alter- 
nating with rains the year round ; sterility most 
intense bordered by vegetation the most crowded 
and gigantic ; here not sustenance enough for 
a blade of grass ; there vines equal to the largest 
hawsers, and the baobab-tree, sometimes a hun- 
dred feet in circumference. 1 It is the peculiar 
garden of the papyrus and of the date-tree — 
one among its thousand species of palms — of 
ferns and of heaths, of which, in South Africa 
alone, five hundred species have already been 
registered. It is the favorite abode of the chim- 
panzee and gorilla, of the jackal and the ichneu- 
mon, of the ostrich, the antelope and giraffe, the 
zebra, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, elephant 
and lion. But a little way from Europe, a penin- 
sula of Asia, it has, in the main, continued iso- 
lated, and of small commercial or political im- 
portance. Great rivers, the usual highways to 
interior regions, are here blocked by bars or 
cataracts and rapids. Across the broad northern 
plateau stretches a sea of sand, more effectually 
dissociating the rest of the continent from early 
seats of civilization than would an ocean of twice 
the same width. Not till the Arab introduced 



1 "The writer has the measurement of one, of which the 
trunk alone was upwards of one hundred and fifty feet in cir- 
cumference, giving an average diameter of fifty feet, though 
not perfectly round." Silver's Handbook to South Africa, 161. 



lect.ix.] DILATORY DEVELOPMENT. 347 

his u ship of the desert " could the Sahara be 
traversed at all. Claudius Ptolemy, the most 
distinguished of ancient astronomers and geog- 
raphers, himself born at Alexandria, believed that 
the southern portion of Asia swept round into 
connection with his native Africa. Even till 
within the last four hundred years, the shape 
of the continent was not known to Europeans. 
The most ancient historical river of our globe, 
which had been famous for three thousand years 
already when America was discovered, did not 
yield up the secret of its source till men yet 
living boldly undertook the exploration. The 
earliest nation known to history had its home on 
this continent, as also have nations the most 
recently made known to civilized man. 

The opening of Central Africa is the great 
geographical revelation of our day. Immemo- 
rially it had been pronounced a vast sandy plain, 
destitute of inhabitants, of vegetation and water. 
We now find that it is fertile and populous to 
a high degree ; that its lake-system rivals that 
of North America; while it sends into the At- 
lantic, by one channel six miles wide, a volume 
of fresh water three times as great as the Missis- 
sippi, making itself felt scores of miles at sea 
— a river first explored by a countryman of ours, 
and so late as 1876-1877. The last seventy years 
have disclosed more in regard to this great con- 
tinent than the seventeen hundred years that 
went before. 



348 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. ix. 

If the eye finds little in the contour of Africa 
that is pleasing ; if it sees only a huge trunk 
devoid of limbs, an undeveloped mass, insular 
and compact — it beholds a division of the globe 
not less behindhand socially and in its political 
institutions. We here find the broadest domain 
of savagery ; and we are appalled by the contem- 
plation particularly of one form of human wrong 
existing on a scale and with accompaniments 
which are without parallel. This is the conti- 
nent of slavery, indigenous, universal, remorseless. 
One half of the native population, outside of 
British influence, would seem to be in actual 
or imminent bondage. Here is a vast empire of 
brute force. Inter-tropical Africa is more espe- 
cially the domain of violence aiming at enslave- 
ment — a condition not, indeed, peculiar to this 
continent, though peculiar in its character and 
history. The servitude to which Mohammedans 
in the Barbary States formeriy subjected Chris- 
tians who came within their grasp was charac- 
terized by full horror enough ; but there existed 
the truculent apology of a different race and 
religion. The Koran had made it a virtue. But 
Africa is enslaved by Africa and for Africa. 
For debt, for crimes, and by sorcerj^, neighbor 
subjects neighbor. Guerilla war is universal — 
predatory raids, not to avenge injuries, not for 
the enlargement of territory, not to secure gar- 
nered grain or hoarded gold, but to make booty 



lect.ix.] SLAVE TKADE. 349 

of fellow-men. The chief acquaintance which 
Central Africa for three centuries had with those 
calling themselves Christians, was in barter for 
human flesh and blood. A harvest of human 
hands was reaped for the rest of the world. Por- 
tuguese led the way ; Spaniards followed ; the 
French were not slow to imitate ; and, strangest 
of all, England outdid all her neighbors. The 
greater part of the wealth of Bristol and Liver- 
pool, prior to the abolition of the slave-trade, was 
due to that traffic. It is estimated that, in the 
course of three centuries, over forty millions of 
human beings were forced from the shores of this 
doomed continent into foreign servitude; while 
thousands upon thousands of lives were sacrificed 
in securing that atrocious prize. To such foreign 
trade chiefly is it due that good neighborhood has 
been made impossible; that all social ties are 
sundered; that inter-tribal war has become a 
chronic malady — a scourge more fatal than the 
simoom. The outside demand has continued re- 
lentless. Alliances are formed with native chiefs, 
who make no conscience of swooping up one of 
their own hamlets when a raid upon some border 
tribe has proved a failure. Witness a foray. An 
armed band comes suddenly upon a settlement. 
The young and healthy are seized ; the aged and 
sick are left to starve ; houses are fired ; a chain- 
gang is formed; iron neck-rings or rough wooden 
yokes are employed, and a rapid march toward 



350 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

the rendezvous begun. The bodies of captives 
are torn with thorns in the jungle, and lacerated 
with the driver's whip. The more feeble, no 
longer able to bear up under loss of blood or want 
of food, fall, and their heads are severed as the 
easiest way to disengage an encumbrance from 
the coffle, which must be hurried on. Homo 
homini Dcemon. Such has been the work of fire 
and sword, whip and chain, for hundreds of years, 
spreading desolation, and leaving misery behind ; 
while the salable plunder has been packed into 
stifling dens between decks, and, if not thrown 
overboard, is, at the end of the voyage, exchanged 
for civilized doubloons. It is a species of com- 
merce unequaled in barbarity — the most mon- 
strous form of wickedness known in the annals of 
depravity. To Africa belongs a sad preeminence 
of wrongs — wrongs more gigantic, more intense, 
more prolonged, than in any other quarter of the 
globe. 

Nor is it yet a century since united and effec- 
tive efforts were put forth (1787) for suppressing 
the exterior slave-trade, and so far abating the in- 
terior trade. Portugal, the first to begin, was the 
last to abandon, the horrid traffic. England, deep 
in guilt, was earliest in repentance and in fruits 
meet for repentance. She is the banner nation 
in this department of philanthropy, declaring the 
trade to be felony, then piracy. She has made 
most noble endeavors to remove such a blot on 



lect.ix.] CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA. 351 

modern civilization as this diabolical commerce. 
Under her leadership, other maritime nations have 
been drawn into cooperative schemes for extermi- 
nating the hydra. Yet, notwithstanding costly 
blockades, exportation from the western coast has 
not wholly ceased, it is said; along the eastern 
coast, it is still active. Barth states (1849-1855) 
that a little to the north of the equator, and east 
of Guinea, individual natives often own as many 
as a thousand slaves ; and that in one instance 
slave-hunters slaughtered one hundred and sev- 
enty full-grown men before his eyes. Elephants 
yield costly ivory ; vegetable wealth abounds ; 
valuable minerals are not wanting; still human 
beings have been the staple of commerce. Five 
pounds of powder will buy a man ; a single gun 
will buy two men. As an illicit trade, its greater 
risks have only occasioned increased cruelties. 

Is there any sanitary agent equal to the de- 
mands of the case — anything that can heal what 
Livingstone calls "this open sore" of centuries, 
which has made equatorial Africa one vast mori- 
bund mass? Christianity removed slavery from 
Western Europe six centuries ago ; it has since 
banished serfdom alike from Eastern and Western 
Europe. There is no dark problem of individual 
or continental evil to which it is not adequate. 
Bring it to bear; enlist Heaven, and the Dark 
Continent shall be renovated. The light-bring- 
ing, life-giving agency is entering the field ; and 



352 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

around the rim of Africa may be seen, at many 
points, the feet of them that " bring good tidings 
of good." They are also beginning their march 
inland. The demon of slavery, of war, of sorcery, 
of wanton and superstitious butchery, will yet be 
driven into outer darkness. Africa once shielded 
the infant Jesus ; our ascended Saviour has not 
forgotten that continent. The man who relieved 
the fainting Jesus of his cross was an African; 
from Cyrene to the Cape of Good Hope, every 
tribe shall erelong glory in that cross. 

According to both German and English geogra- 
phers, Africa has two hundred millions of inhabi- 
tants. The. first modern Protestant movement 
in their behalf was made by Moravians, and at 
the southern extremity. We at once recur by 
contrast to the north of the continent, and to 
the early centuries of the Christian era, when 
churches were planted along the coast of the 
Mediterranean, and in Egypt and Abyssinia; 
when, at one of the ecclesiastical councils, three 
hundred and seventy-seven ministers were in con- 
sultation on religious affairs; and when Africa 
could boast of names which, from those times 
to the present, have been famous in church his- 
tory — a Clemens and Cyprian, an Origen and 
Tertullian, an Athanasius and Augustine. But 
beacon-lights thus kindled along the upper border 
of the Dark Continent were not fed and multi- 
plied ; the evangelical spirit waned; evangelistic 



lect.ix.] INITIAL MOVEMENT. 353 

movements ceased; the churches failed to give 
the gospel to interior tribes, and their candle- 
stick was removed out of its place. Promulga- 
tion or death is everywhere the alternative. To 
the shame of early churches, Africa remained 
heathen ; to the shame of modern churches, Mo- 
hammedanism has remained undisturbed in its 
older usurpations, and has been allowed to keep 
on till the present hour, sweeping unhindered 
over one half of this great division of our globe. 
It startles us to learn that the oldest and largest 
theological school in existence, a Mohammedan 
institution, is on this same benighted continent, 
in its most populous city, and within sight of 
monuments which, for three thousand years, have 
been the wonder of the world. The Azar at 
Cairo has three hundred professors and ten thou- 
sand students, representing all nationalities where 
Islam prevails. The institution has no endow- 
ments or scholarships ; the professors have no 
salaries ; most of the students are poor ; yet here 
for nearly a thousand years Mohammedan fanati- 
cism has maintained this propaganda. 

Christendom, thank God ! is beginning to awake. 
There are now not less than thirty societies en- 
gaged in the work of sending the gospel thither. 
Herrnhut — all honor to the Unitas Fratrum ! — 
took the lead. Although the Dutch had had a 
foothold at the Cape of Good Hope more than 
three fourths of a century, they failed to take 



354 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, ix. 

the first step toward giving the gospel to Hot- 
tentot or Kafir. When Ziegenbalg and Pliit- 
schau, pioneers of the Danish Tranquebar Mission, 
touched at the Cape on their way to India, in 
1706, they were surprised to find that Dutch 
masters did not allow slaves to be baptized; but 
all that those missionaries could do was to pray 
God to have mercy on these neglected heathen. 1 
The account of their visit to Cape Town, after- 
wards published, was not without influence in 
turning the attention of European Christians to 
the needs of South Africa. Two pious gentle- 
men, Messrs. Van Alphen and De Bruyn, at 
Amsterdam, becoming at length affected by such 
accounts of the Hottentots, to whom should they 
turn, with any hope of a favorable response, but 
to that band of pioneers who had already estab- 
lished missions in the West Indies and Green- 
land? The providence and grace of God had 
been training a man, humble in rank, unlearned, 
but full of faith and the Holy Ghost, full of zeal 
and fortitude, who stood ready for the service. 
It was George Schmidt. Though he was then 
only twenty-seven years of age, one part of his 
education had been a six years' imprisonment, for 
the truth's sake, in Bohemia, and to the day of 
death he bore the marks of galling chains. The 
letter from Amsterdam reached Herrnhut on the 

1 Germann : " Ziegenbalg u. Pliitschau," s. 62. 



leot.ix.] INITIAL MOVEMENT. 355 

sixth of February; seven days later, Schmidt 
was on his way to Holland. That was 1736, the 
year when the first three converts were baptized 
by Moravian missionaries on St. Thomas, and 
when Mohegan Indians, under the lead of Ser- 
geant, began to build the town of Stockbridge, 
Massachusetts. Clergymen, appointed by the 
Dutch East India Company to examine Schmidt 
at Amsterdam, endeavored to dissuade him from 
his undertaking. " The language of the Hotten- 
tots," said they, "is extremely difficult. They 
have nothing but wild roots to feed upon. What 
do you think of that? " " With God," he replied, 
" all things are possible ; and, as I have assurance 
that it is the will of God I should preach the 
gospel to the Hottentots, so I hope firmly in him 
that he will carry me through the greatest diffi- 
culties." The earnest Moravian was obliged to 
remain at Amsterdam a whole year, earning his 
bread as a day-laborer, till a passage to the Cape 
could be secured. But the man who had gradu- 
ated, after a six years' course of patient waiting, 
from the Spielberg, where Silvio Pellico also 
learned the rigors of Austrian intolerance, could 
quietly await God's time. On the voyage out, he 
labored successfully with three godless passen- 
gers. He arrived at Cape Town July 9, 1737. 
How was he received ? With scorn and derision. 
Schmidt established himself on Sergeant's River, 
fifty miles back in the country ; but, being com- 



356 MORAVIAN MISSIONS, [lect.ix. 

plained of by hostile farmers as too near the 
company's post, he removed the next spring still 
farther from Cape Town to the Zondereinde. 1 
Gradually the Hottentots gathered round him, 
one Africo being interpreter. Finding, as had 
been represented, that their language was pecul- 
iarly difficult, he taught them Dutch ; and, open- 
ing a school for children, he presently had from 
thirty to fifty pupils. About the same number 
came at length to attend upon the service which 
he held ; he gained their confidence ; their con- 
sciences were aroused, and some of them brought 
to a saving knowledge of the truth. One of these, 
Willem, lived in the same hut with the mission- 
ary, and his testimony was : "If all my country- 
men were to forsake the Saviour, yet I would 
not go away ; for with him is life. I know that 
I am not yet what I ought to be; but I will never- 
theless abide with Jesus, and will not cease pray- 
ing to him till I receive the full power of his pre- 
cious blood to change my heart." 

But who are the Hottentots ? To appreciate 
the w^ork of this lonely Moravian, we must con- 
sider what the people ivere to whom he devoted 
himself, and what were their surroundings. It 
even still requires an effort not to associate the 
negro with Africa in its whole wide extent, that 



1 The Zondereinde, " Without end," a short tributary of the 
Breede. 



lect.ix.] THE HOTTENTOTS. 357 

limited race, the one which we have hitherto 
known chiefly as representing the Dark Conti- 
nent. The pure negro type, however, is almost 
totally unknown south of the equator. Below that 
torrid line, comes the great Bantu family, with 
numerous branches spread over the lower half 
of the continent. Like an island in the midst 
of that fluctuating sea of dark-skinned peoples, 
are the Hottentots, with whom Bushmen also 
have hitherto usually, though incorrectly, been 
classed. The name, Hottentots, is said to have 
been given them by the Dutch, as denoting stam- 
merers, and in derision of the clicks which abound 
in their language. Their own name is Koi-Koin, 
Men. 1 They have narrow foreheads, low skulls, 
a tufted matting of hair; and, although their 
woolly hair is not quite identical with that of the 
Bantu tribes, it is almost the only characteris- 
tic possessed in common with them. They have 
high cheek-bones and prominent jaws ; pointed 
chin, snub nose ; lips not swelling to the same 
degree as the negro ; nor are they so dark as 
the negro. Hands and feet are even delicate and 
beautiful, and so small that adults might wear 
the gloves and shoes of European children ten 
years of age. They resemble the Papuans of 



1 In older works, Quaiquce. They distinguished themselves 
from Bushmen, who were regarded by Hottentots and Bantug 
as hardly human beings. 



858 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect ix. 

Fiji. Though not tall, they are not dwarfs. 1 The 
house, dome-shaped or shaped like a bee-hive, is 
a low framework of sticks thrust into the earth, 
bound together, and covered with rush mats. I 
speak of them as they were on becoming first 
known to Europeans, when they were neither 
hunters nor farmers, but herdsmen, who trained 
cattle largely for the purpose of riding. Like all 
Africans, they are acquainted with smelting iron 
and working that metal. Their weapons are the 
shield, spear, bow and poisoned arrow; their food, 
chiefly fruits and roots. Men and women eat apart. 
They can go without food for days ; but, in doing 
so, they lessen the pains of hunger by tightening 
the famine-girdle, so called, about the person. 2 
In mourning they — particularly the women — 
cut off joints of their fingers. Children, as among 
the Eskimos, are treated with great indulgence ; 
but in turn parents are not treated with affection 
or respect. They, as well as the infirm, are left 
exposed in desert places. The Hottentot is mer- 
curial, fond of music, light-hearted, yet capricious, 
indolent, and untidy to the last degree. 3 His 

1 The peculiar formation called steatophyga is about as com- 
mon among them, and among Bushmen, as corpulency is among 
Europeans. 

2 So, in Germany, people on a journey will sometimes buckle 
tightly around them a girdle, called Schmachtriemen, " girdle of 
emptiness.'' 

3 The Hottentots might have sat for most of the traits in 
Salvian's portrait of other Africans: Inhumani, impuri, ebriosi, 



lect.ix.1 THE HOTTENTOTS. 359 

language, abrupt and abounding in consonants, 
resembles the Shemitic tongues in having a dual, 
and in having the pronouns suffixed to other 
words. 1 Its resemblance to the language of an- 
cient Egypt was first pointed out by Dr. Moffat; 
and it is a curious circumstance that ancient 
Egyptian sculptures present costumes, utensils 
and occupations such as may be seen in any 
native kraal 2 at the opposite end of the continent 
today. The Bechuanas, a South-African people, 
have a tradition that the dead should be buried 
looking to the northeast, whence it is supposed 
their forefathers came. Indeed, the traditions of 
several South-African tribes point to that part 
of the continent as their primeval home. 3 Writers 
on anthropology sometimes affirm that primitive 
and savage peoples have no abstract terms, and 
no word denoting kindliness, for instance ; yet 

falsissimi, fraudulentissimi, cupidissimi, perfidissimi et obscenis, li- 
bidinum omnium impuritati et blasphemiis addictissimi. Lib. de 
vero Indicio. 

1 Others deny it the name of speech, as having nothing of 
sound or articulation that is peculiar to man in it ; but resem- 
bling, say they, the noise of irritated turkey-cocks, the chatter- 
ing of magpies, and the hooting of owls. Kolben : The Cape of 
Good Hope, I, 82. 

2 Kraal like corral of South America, a village of native 
huts, usually in a circular form, the cattle being thus enclosed 
at night for protection against wild beasts. The word, it is 
said, signified originally a glass or coral bead, then a necklace, 
and then naturally a cincture of huts. 

3 Appendix to Keith Johnstone's Africa, 512. 



360 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

the Koi-Koin have such a term. The dearth of 
water in the regions chiefly occupied by them ne- 
cessitates migratory habits and hinders growth. 
The bearing and feelings of Europeans have to 
a large extent forced them beyond the limits of 
Cape Colony ; while within the Colony there re- 
main perhaps a hundred thousand, only a small 
part of whom are unmixed Koi-Koin. They have 
lost their original language, and now, in some 
good measure, speak either the Dutch or a Dutch 
patois ; but they acquire foreign languages quite 
readily. They are exceedingly improvident ; and, 
as among so many other subject and inferior races, 
the great weakness of the Hottentot lies in his use 
of intoxicating drinks. 

Such were the people among whom earliest mis- 
sionary labor began a century and a half since. 
It was the day of small things in that direction 
throughout the Protestant world. Here was but 
one man, with no accessories of influence from 
talent, culture, position, ample funds or numer- 
ous friends. Having received authorization by let- 
ter from home, our missionary baptized a native, 
naming him Willem, the first-fruits of his faith 
and toil, the first-fruits of modern Christianity 
in Africa. This took place March 31, 1742, in 
a stream by the way, on their return from Cape 
Town, after the manner of Philip and the Ethi- 
opian. Others were baptized somewhat later. 
More than one Hollander in the neighborhood 



lect. ix.] DUTCH ADMINISTRATION. 361 

also became hopefully converted through him. 
In his loneliness and great disappointment, the 
good man's courage did not fail him. " Ah, my 
dearly beloved brethren and sisters," he wrote, 
" think on me and my poor people! Let the 
incense of your prayers go up unceasingly to 
the throne of Majesty on high, that Jesus Christ 
may crown this work with his grace and com- 
passion. In closing, I must remind you that 
I stand alone here, without helpers, and that I 
greatly long for one. Let everything that hath 
breath praise the Lord! Hallelujah!" But the 
announcement that Hottentots were being recog- 
nized as men, and even as Christians, caused 
astonishment among the Dutch colonists. To 
their notions, their neglects, their abuses, this 
was a silent rebuke not to be tolerated. Pride 
and self-interest took the alarm. Schmidt was 
prohibited from baptizing any more natives, and 
compelled to return to Europe. What a position 
his — the first, and for six years a solitary, Chris- 
tian laborer among the millions of heathen Africa, 
virtually driven away by Protestant Europeans, 
and not allowed to return to his post! 

To comprehend this anomaly, we must glance at 
the sentiments and proceedings of the Dutch, who 
then held the Cape. Such a sketch will throw 
light on the condition of mind in certain parts of 
Christendom at that day. Two hundred years 
had gone by, after the discovery of the Cape of 



362 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

Good Hope, before Hollanders established them- 
selves there (1652). The} r , like their Portuguese 
predecessors, foresaw the advantage of such a half- 
way house for supplying their ships engaged in 
the lucrative East India trade. The East India 
Company of Holland established the most despotic 
regulations and illiberal restrictions. Many of the 
early colonists were anything but the best material 
for such an enterprise, the Dutch Government hav- 
ing sent out one hundred men and as many women 
from the Houses of Industry at Amsterdam. Six 
years after the planting of this colony, the first 
cargo of slaves was imported from Guinea ; others 
were brought from the eastern coast and from 
Madagascar. Thus the servitude of Africans to 
Europeans was one of the earliest lessons which the 
new civilization introduced; and only in 1807 did 
the last importation of slaves take place. A com- 
pany of French and Piedmontese, chiefly Hugue- 
nots, numbering three hundred souls, driven from 
their country upon the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, were made welcome (1685-88) ; but they 
afterwards found that the tyranny of the French 
monarch was reflected in the petty despots of this 
colony — one of the strange inconsistencies of a 
liberty-loving people who had themselves suffered 
so much from oppression, and who, with heroic en- 
ergy, had cast off a foreign yoke. 

Strongly does the selfish and cruel policy pur- 
sued toward native tribes at the Cape contrast 



lect.ix.1 DUTCH ADMINISTRATION. 363 

with that of our Pilgrim Fathers, who had 
landed not long before on our shores, and who, 
from the outset, kept in mind the welfare of the 
Indian. Friendly relations with the Hottentot 
were maintained at first; but, as soon as safety 
seemed to admit, injustice, and even barbarity, 
began to be practiced. Before the first year 
had passed, Van Riebeck, Governor of the Dutch 
Colony, in his journal, dated December, 1652, 
says: "The Hottentots came, with thousands of 
cattle and sheep, close to our fort, but we 
could not succeed in traffic with them. We feel 
vexed to see so many fine herds of cattle, and not 
to be able to buy to any considerable extent. If 
it had been indeed allowed, we had opportunity 
enough to deprive them today of ten thousand 
head ; which, however, if we obtain orders to that 
effect, can be done at any time, and even more 
conveniently, because they will by that time have 
greater confidence in us. With one hundred and 
fifty men, eleven thousand head of black cattle 
might be obtained without danger of losing one 
man ; and many savages might be taken without 
resistance, in order to be sent as slaves to India, 
as they will always come to us unarmed. If no 
further trade is to be expected with them, what 
should it matter much to take at once six or eight 
thousand beasts from them ? There is opportunity 
enough for it, as they are not strong in number, 
and very timid, and since not more than two 



364 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. ix. 

or three men often graze a thousand cattle close 
to our cannons, who might be easily cut off." l 
The truculent thought, here expressed, afterwards 
passed into fact. 

Suspicion and fear naturally took deep hold of 
the native mind. The colonists encroached more 
and more upon their territory ; they were driven 
back, yet not beyond the reach of marauding 
Europeans, who, as they became stronger, would 
carry fire and sword into the native villages, with 
a determination to drive them from the colony, 
except as the want of herdsmen or of men to till 
the soil might spare these wretched beings for 
slavery. But, when reduced to bondage, and 
brought into contact with people bearing the 
Christian name, they were not encouraged, often 
not allowed, to avail themselves of religious privi- 
leges. They had usually no place within conse- 
crated walls. Over the doors of one church was 
posted the notice: "Hottentots and dogs forbid- 
den to enter!" 2 

It is not difficult to understand why men sanc- 
tioning such terrorism and sharing in it should 
become hostile to missionary efforts in behalf of 
abused Hottentots and Bushmen. Cruelty to na- 
tives and opposition to missionary labor were 
strangely associated with orthodoxy and a punc- 
tilious observance of usual religious forms. It was 

1 The Wrongs of the Caff re Nation, o, note. 

2 Philip's Researches, I, 58. 



lect.ixo SCHMIDT EXPELLED. 365 

something new among them for any one to regard 
the natives as human beings. They were accus- 
tomed to speak of them as " black wares," "black 
beasts," "black creatures," understanding thereby 
not creatures of God, but of the Devil. The pres- 
ence of George Schmidt was an unendurable eye- 
sore. His communications to Holland and to 
Herrnhut might reveal things that would startle 
Europeans at home. In point of fact, he had been 
extremely guarded in this particular. Little pains 
were required to stir up the strongest prejudice 
against him, and to make it appear that his work 
implied peril to colonial interests, as was the case 
under the English East India Company's sway in 
India. That work imperiled nothing but the in- 
terests of selfishness and inhumanity. So excited 
and tyrannical did the Colonial Government be- 
come as to deprive a parish clerk of his appoint- 
ment, and order him home, for having been asso- 
ciated with Schmidt. The faithful missionary, 
whose only offence was that he had preached the 
gospel to poor heathen, 1 of whom Christian invad- 
ers would make merchandise, could never obtain 
leave to return to South Africa. After a season 
of evangelistic labor in Silesia, on the confines of 
Bohemia and Moravia^ he supported himself as a 
day-laborer at Niesky, and finally as a sexton and 



1 His congregation at the time he left numbered forty-seven 
persons. 



366 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

grave-digger. Seventy-six years of age, he at- 
tended divine service one day (August 1, 1785) ; 
worked in his garden the next morning for a 
while ; went to his little room to pray in private, 
as usual, for South Africa; and at noon was in 
Paradise. Like Livingstone, he died upon his 
knees. 

Not till after more than fifty years (1792) was 
the mission renewed. The Presidency of the 
Board of Directors of the Dutch East India Com- 
pany was now filled by a gentleman friendly 
to the Moravians ; and so their request for permis- 
sion to reestablish a missionary settlement among 
the Hottentots received a very favorable answer. 
Three Brethren, Marsveld, Schwinn and Kiihnel, 
went to the Cape, and, upon recommendation, pro- 
ceeded to a place eighty miles eastward, called 
"Bavian's Kloof," Baboon's Glen. 1 It proved to 
be the very spot where George Schmidt had la- 
bored. A part of the walls of his house was still 
standing. Among the briers of his garden were 
some fruit-trees, and particularly a noble pear-tree, 
a fine emblem of spiritual results from seed planted 
by him during his short stay at the Glen. Its 
shade now served for five years as both church 



1 Rowley, in Africa Unveiled, 270, gives the distance as one 
hundred and twenty miles, and on the next page states that 
Genadendal is about eighty miles from Cape Town, not aware, 
apparently, that these are two names for the same place. The 
word is properly " Baviaan." 



lect.ix.] MISSION RENEWED. 367 

and school-house. "I am thankful and ashamed," 
said one of those Hottentots who flocked around 
the missionary Brethren, "that such a great sin- 
ner should be thus favored by our Saviour. I re- 
member what my late father used to say, exhorting 
us children to take notice and follow those people 
who would come from a distant country, and show 
us Hottentots a narrow way by which we might 
escape from the great fire, and find the true God. 
When the first teachers came to show us that way, 
the farmers were very angry, and told us that they 
meant to sell us as slaves. But I remembered my 
father's words, and would not be prevented from 
moving to Bavian's Kloof. Now, when I consider 
what the Lord has done for me, my heart is melted 
within me." A half-blind woman, Magdalena by 
name, fourscore years of age, who had received the 
ordinance of baptism from his hands, came with 
a Dutch New Testament which he had given her, 
and which she preserved carefully wrapped in two 
sheepskins. " Those that be planted in the house 
of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God; 
they shall still bring forth fruit in old age." And 
so from time to time, for years, the new mission- 
aries found evidence that this was a branch of the 
Lord's planting. 1 Within a twelvemonth after 

1 Sparrman, afterwards a companion of Captain Cook, found 
natives who had grateful recollections of Schmidt's kindness, and 
showed the fruits of his teaching, thirty years subsequent to the 
missionary's retirement from South Africa. 



368 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, ix. 

the renewal of the mission, some half a dozen were 
baptized. "We cannot," the missionaries write, 
" find words to express the powerful sensation of 
the grace of God which prevailed on these occa- 
sions, and the impression made on those who were 
present. These days were truly festival days to 
us. The Hottentots were visibly affected, and de- 
clared their earnest desire to be made partakers of 
the same grace." 

Dutch farmers opposed and maligned the mis- 
sionaries and converts. They would give out 
that, while God created Christians, Hottentots be- 
longed to the race of baboons; that they were 
liable to be shot or enslaved. " You stupid crea- 
ture ! " said a farmer's wife to a Hottentot girl 
who wished to leave her service and go to Bavian's 
Kloof; "you stupid creature ! What! do you think 
these Moravians would come from such a great 
distance merely to teach you God's Word? No 
indeed: they are poor people, and mean to be- 
come rich by you; for when you have learned 
something, they then intend to sell you." The 
irate colonists reported that the Moravians taught 
the natives to steal, murder, and commit other 
enormities ; they even went so far as to declare, 
"If the missionaries come here to convert the 
Hottentots, they ought immediately to be put to 
death." 

A desire to receive instruction from Christian 
teachers, however, increased among the Hot- 



lect.ix.] OPPOSITION RENEWED. 369 

tentots; but it was seldom an easy tiling to ob- 
tain that advantage. One of them, whose term of 
service with a farmer had expired, was on his way 
to Bavian's Kloof, when the farmer sent three 
armed men in pursuit, who threatened to shoot 
him, and forced him to return and serve another 
year. Sometimes the natives, fearing detention, 
would not venture to ask for their hard-earned 
wages, lest they should be prevented from going 
to the station. Animosity continued with vary- 
ing forms and degrees of violence. So intense 
and reckless did the opposition of neighboring 
farmers become at one time (1795-6) as to culmi- 
nate in an organization of a hundred men armed 
for the purpose of murdering the Brethren ; but 
no sooner had they gathered at their place of 
rendezvous than a message from the British gen- 
eral announced the discovery of their plot, and 
thus the settlement was saved. Attempts were 
now made to starve out the missionaries by refusal 
to send them necessary supplies ; but that scheme 
also failed. During an armed insurrection of 
Boers, who were determined to obtain redress for 
their alleged grievances, among the articles of 
their memorial to Government were the following, 
which show their animus: "That they would al- 
low no Moravians to live in the country and in- 
struct the Hottentots; for, as there were many 
Christians in the colony who received no educa- 
tion, it was not proper that the Hottentots should 

24 



370 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.ix. 

be made wiser than they, but that they should re- 
main in the same state as before." " All Bosjes- 
mans, or wild Hottentots, caught by us, must 
remain slaves for life." Persecution received a 
check, however, during the English Protectorate 
(1795-1803), and was still further curbed when 
the Cape of Good Hope was definitely ceded 
(1815) to Great Britain by the King of Holland. 

In the mean time, the settlement at Bavian's 
Kloof increased despite of violent prejudice and 
opposition. Missionary reinforcements from Eu- 
rope were called for; and, only five years after 
the work had been resumed (1797), a church 
building was put up capable of accommodating 
several hundred hearers, there being at that time 
two hundred and twenty-eight Hottentot dwell- 
ings, and eighty-four baptized members of the 
community. The mission gradually gained upon 
the confidence of the better part of European 
residents. Jansen, the Dutch Governor, having 
raised a corps of Hottentot soldiers, asked to have 
a Moravian military chaplain appointed; and one 
of the missionaries, Kohrammer, designated for 
that purpose, moved to the camp, near Cape 
Town (1804), where his labors were blessed. 
After the English captured that place (1806), ' the 

1 On board one of tKe ships in the fleet which conveyed 
British troops to the Cape at this time, was Henry Martyn, 
bound for India. While Moravian missionaries were engaged 
in prayer on shore, he was similarly occupied in his cabin, when 



lect. ix.] GROWTH. 371 

Governor showed much friendliness to the Mora- 
vian Brethren. The old name of Glen or Den 
of Baboons (Bavian's Kloof) had been changed 
to Genadendal, 1 Vale of Grace, which happily- 
indicated the moral transformation there effected. 
The first English Governor, Lord Caledon, even 
solicited the Brethren to establish a new settle- 
ment on land offered them for that purpose 
(1808) ; and the station Groenekloof, Green Glen, 
was the result. After witnessing the baptism of 
five Hottentots, a venerable man, a privy coun- 
cilor, said to one of the missionaries : " Permit 
me to go into your room, that I may give vent 
to my feelings." He then exclaimed : " Oh, what 
real happiness do you, my clear friend, enjoy 
among your brethren and sisters ! May God 
Almighty continue to bless your labors among 
the Hottentots with abundant success! Never 
has my heart felt what it did this day. Happy 
are those poor Hottentots who have the favor to 



not ministering to the wounded after the capture of the place ; 
and he wrote : " The Blue Mountains to the eastward, which 
formed the boundary of the prospect, were a cheering contrast 
to what was immediately before me; for there I conceived my 
beloved and honored fellow-servants, companions in the king- 
dom and patience of Jesus Christ, to be passing the days of 
their pilgrimage far from the world, imparting the truths of 
the blessed gospel to benighted souls." Life of Henry Martyn, 
176. 

1 The original and proper orthography is Gnadenthal ; but 
Genadendal is now universally adopted by English writers. 



872 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. ix. 

live with and be instructed by you ; for it is 
indeed true what they sing, ' The Lord hath done 
great things for us.' " 

When the jubilee festival of Genadendal came 
round in 1842, it appeared that one thousand 
eight hundred and eighty-one adults, and over 
two thousand children (2,027), had there received 
baptism ; l and, when the corresponding semi- 
centenary of Mamre, 2 the second settlement that 
was formed — about forty miles north of Cape 
Town — took place (1858), seven hundred and 
seventy-eight adults and over sixteen hundred 
(1,654) children had shared in the same ordi- 
nance. 

It is too late to inquire if a people so rude as 
the Koi-Koin, so near the lowest grade of man- 
kind, can be brought to accept the truths of the 
gospel; too late to ask whether minds so dark- 
ened, whether natures so brutalized for untold 
generations, will respond to the touch of the Holy 
Spirit, thus affording additional confirmation to 
the unity of our race, and to the efficacy of our 
holy religion. Hottentots, it is found, are sus- 
ceptible, for instance, to the feeling of guilt. 
One of them, 3 rehearsing truths which a mission- 
ary had stated to her, says: "These words seized 

1 A training-school of native helpers was established in 
1838. 

3 Till 1854 called Groenekloof . 
3 Hannah Jonker. 



lect.ixo GROWTH. 373 

upon my heart like a fever, and I trembled all 
over. I ran into the fields, hid myself behind the 
bushes, and cried day and night to God for mercy. 
All my sins appeared before me in their damning 
power. When it grew dark, I durst not venture 
to lie down, for I thought I should die and be 
lost forever. One morning, I went to one of the 
missionaries and told him that there was no help 
for me, for I was a lost sinner. His answer was, 
4 Do not come to me any more as an orphan that 
has lost father and mother, but know that you 
have a Father in heaven who can and will help 
you.' I took courage and thought, If I have a 
Father in heaven, I will trust and cleave to him. 
The Lord appeared for me, and I was helped." 
"I am sitting in the midst of my sins," one of 
them replies, u like a man sitting in the fire, and 
am ready to be choked and consumed by the 
anguish of my soul ; I stretch my arms towards 
heaven and cry, 4 Lord Jesus, give me but one 
drop of thy grace to quench the fire burning 
within ! ' " Do they evince an abiding love to 
Christ ? " True it is," answers a Hottentot, " that 
I am a poor sinner, but I have lost all taste for 
the things of this world. When I am at work, 
I think of the things of our Saviour. If I am in 
company, I hardly hear what is going forward; 
for my heart is with him. When I lie down to 
sleep, I pray to him ; and I dream of the meetings 
in the church. I enjoy at present great happi- 



374 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

ness. Oh, help me to pray that I may not soon 
lose it again." " Oh, yes," says another, " he is 
my highest good ; I have nothing beside him in 
this world. He hears all my complaints, and I 
can converse more freely with him than with my 
best friend. Sometimes I could not help praying 
to and praising him upon the road, with a loud 
voice, so that the passengers heard me." Is the 
conflict between flesh and spirit something which 
they are acquainted with? Listen: A young 
man, being asked whether he loved our Saviour 
with his whole heart, replied : " No, not with my 
whole heart ; one half is directed towards him, 
but the other towards fine clothes, horses, and 
other objects." Still another declares : " When- 
ever I endeavor in right good earnest to live 
according to the will of God, it is as if the enemy 
were particularly busy ; and the road to my only 
Helper and Saviour seems, as it were, laid with 
huge, rough stones, over which I have to climb, 
struggling that I may get to him. I then cry 
aloud to him for help, that I may not fall and 
be prevented approaching ; and he gives me 
power, through his sufferings and death, to over- 
come the Evil One." 

Notice the working of their heart in view of 
backsliding, and imperfections not yet overcome. 
"I cannot speak with you," says a Hottentot 
woman, " for my heart is like a piece of land over 
which the torrents have burst, and covered it 
with sand and rubbish, till the good ground is 



lect.ix.] GROWTH. 375 

no longer visible." One Philip, who had fallen 
into open sin, became deeply convicted of his 
wickedness. In a despairing frame of mind, he 
was admitted to the family worship of a farmer, 
and heard the parable of the Pharisee and pub- 
lican read. While the prayer of the Pharisee 
was read, the poor Hottentot thought within 
himself, "This is a good man; here is nothing 
for me ; " but when his master came to the prayer 
of the publican, "God be merciful to me a sin- 
ner," "this suits me," he cried; "now I know 
how to pray ! " With this prayer he retired, and 
prayed night and day for two days, and then 
found peace. Full of joy and gratitude, he went 
into the fields, and, as he had no one to whom 
he could speak, he exclaimed: "Ye hills, ye 
rocks, ye trees, ye rivers ! hear what God has 
done for my soul; he has been merciful to me 
a sinner ! " Beautiful instances of resignation, 
trust in the heavenly Father, and patient, joyous 
endurance, occur. " God formed our eyes," said 
a native, sick and suffering from want, " God 
formed our eyes in such a manner that we cannot 
see what happens on the other side of yonder 
hill, and I never heard any one complain of it. 
Our mind's eye is formed in the same manner, 
for we cannot look into futurity. Why should 
we, then, be dissatisfied? No; let us put our 
trust in Him who sees all things, and He will 
help us through every difficulty." At Genaden- 
dal, a Kafir woman, Rebecca Jochem, though con- 



376 MOKAVIAX MISSIONS. [lect.ix. 

fined to her bed by a painful illness (1848), said 
to a missionary: "No famished dog can devour 
its morsel with greater eagerness than I do when 
I feast from the crumbs that fall from my Sav- 
iour's table." 

In all older and established Christian commu- 
nities, there occur certain tests of religious char- 
acter. Mutual confession and forgiveness of in- 
juries is one. Now, here comes a South-African 
communicant, acknowledging that there has been 
a quarrel between her and her husband, but she 
adds : " Our Saviour has granted us grace to be 
friends again. We owned and confessed to each 
other our sins, and, kneeling down, prayed him 
to take all enmity and bitterness away from us. 
He heard our prayers, and we now live in 
peace." A soldier comes forward, confessing that 
he has committed great sin : " Oh, I have struck 
my brother, in a fit of anger, and now I feel ex- 
ceedingly grieved for it." The missionary sends 
for the aggrieved brother, and asks if he can 
forgive the offender. " Yes, my dear teacher," 
he replies, " that will I do with my whole heart; " 
whereupon he reaches out his hand; and the 
two brothers embrace and kiss each other, and 
weep for joy. Gratitude for favors, temporal and 
spiritual, does not always characterize converts 
from heathenism. " Oh, how happy are we now," 
exclaimed a converted Hottentot, in the presence 
of a missionary ; " Oh, how happy are we now, 
since it has pleased God to send teachers to us 



lect.ix.] PSYCHIC SIMILARITY. 377 

to make us acquainted with his Word, and with 
the love of our Saviour towards us ! We were 
formerly not permitted to pronounce the name 
of God in our own language ; a lash would im- 
mediately follow. 'What!' said my baas, 'you 
wretch ! Do you call upon God ? I am your 
God ! ' Or else he would say, 6 Baboons that 
you are ! you have no God but the Hottentots' 
God.' " 

As soon as the constellation of the Seven Stars 
appears annually a,bove the horizon, parents wake 
their children, and, taking them into the fields, 
point out the beautiful visitor in the heavens; 
and all the inhabitants of the kraal dance and 
sing. To this people, which sat in the region 
and shadow of death, light is sprung up, and 
they leap for joy. When, in 1815, the Rev. Mr. 
Latrobe, from England, paid an official visit to 
the mission in South Africa, he was met at 
various points by Hottentot converts with hymns 
and other demonstrations of joy, accounting him 
a representative of the churh to which they owed 
so much. Such testimonies reveal a psychic iden- 
tity between us and them. They make us for- 
get physical, mental and social differences, and 
awaken the feeling of brotherhood with Hotten- 
tots, and joyful anticipation of meeting such as, 
like Corinthian converts, are washed, sanctified, 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by 
the Spirit of our God. 



LECTURE X. 

SOUTH AFRICA. 

CONCLUDED. 



SOUTH AFRICA 

CONCLUDED. 



The term " South Africa " has of late come to 
be a little uncertain in its signification. Occasion- 
ally it is used to cover the whole extent of conti- 
nent south of the equator. In a purely geograph- 
ical sense, and irrespective of political divisions, 
it may take in all that lies below the Zambesi, 
if not indeed including the basin of that river, 
which basin embraces also one or more of the great 
lakes. Such a distribution grows out of a three- 
fold partition of Africa into Northern, Central 
or Equatorial, and Southern. We may define the 
upper limit of this southern portion by a line 
from Walvisch Bay on the Atlantic across to the 
Indian Ocean, below which is an area equal to 
the United States east of the Mississippi River. 
Till within a few years, the term "South Africa" 
was popularly understood as restricted pretty 
much to the Cape Colony, but has been under- 
going enlargement, in the thought of the outside 
world, since the Colony of Natal was planted, 
and especially since the British annexation of the 
Transvaal Republic in 1877 and also of extensive 
tracts to the west. 

(381) 



382 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

Stationing ourselves at Cape Agulhas, the 
southernmost point of the continent, and consid- 
erably below the Cape of Good Hope, we find a 
bold coast swept by rapid currents and confront- 
ing a stormy sea. Looking landward, we see a 
coast-belt sloping in a series of terraces up to 
the truncated summit of a mountain-range that 
runs nearly parallel with the sea, and that, sweep- 
ing round to the right and to the left, stretches 
northward like a rampart facing two oceans, the 
Indian and the Atlantic. Journeying toward 
the interior from any point, we find another 
mountain-range considerably higher, which is the 
border of the vast continental table-land, and 
which has elevations of eight thousand and ten 
thousand feet. None of the rivers are navigable ; 
most of them, especially in the western section, 
are torrents in the rainy season, which sometimes 
rise twenty and thirty feet in a few hours, but 
have dry beds the rest of the year, like the 
wadys of Northern Africa and of Western Asia. 
Owing to evaporation in the desert tracts through 
which it flows, the Orange, or Great Garib, is 
larger hundreds of miles from the sea than at 
its mouth, and it drains rather than irrigates the 
country. South Africa has no lakes. In general, 
the climate is delightful and healthful ; its atmos- 
phere very dry, clear and brilliant, is favorable to 
those having pulmonary weakness; and this is one 
of the few inhabited portions of our world which 



lect.x.] PRODUCTIONS. 383 

have never known the scourge of cholera or yellow- 
fever. Indeed, it is one of the most salubrious re- 
gions on the face of the earth. 

South Africa has, on the whole, a rich and 
varied flora, differing from the rest of the con- 
tinent, and from all other countries except Aus- 
tralia and Chili. Its bulbs and its orchids are 
famous, its grasses numberless and elegant. The 
Constantia grape has the reputation of being un- 
surpassed; and historically it is interesting as 
a memento of the Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes ; for upon that event Protestant exiles 
from France brought with them slips of vines, 
and a flourishing grape-culture was the result. 
Nor is mineral wealth wanting. In Namaqua- 
land are copper-mines accounted among the rich- 
est known. In the Transvaal, valuable gold- 
mines have been found; 1 while the Griqua coun- 
try in the fork of the Vaal and Orange Rivers, and 
on the confines of the Great Sahara of the South, 
disclosed (1867) one of the few diamond-yielding 
regions that are known to man. Where pre- 
viously there was only a handful of natives, sixty 
thousand Europeans were soon congregated. The 
dry diggings seem to be strown with precious 
stones; between fifty and a hundred millions' 



1 1872-73, Baines, Thomas : The Gold Regions of Southeastern 
Africa. London and Cape Colony, 1877. Boyle, Frederick : To 
the Cape for Diamonds. London, 1873. 



384 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

worth of jewels have been found, and among 
them one, the " Star of South Africa," valued, 
even before its cutting, at fifty-six thousand dol- 
lars. 

Here is the sportsman's paradise. 1 Nowhere 
else has there existed game in such quantities, 
nor of such grades as to size, from the pigmy 
antelope six inches in length to the giraffe seven- 
teen feet high ; also as to weight, from the black- 
streaked mouse weighing the fourth of an ounce 
to the elephant weighing four thousand pounds. 
Less than forty species of antelopes are known 
to natural history, and of these about thirty are 
found here. The springbok has sometimes been 
met with in herds of four or five thousand. The 
hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the quagga, the 
zebra, the lion and the leopard abounded formerly 
as in no other country. The advance of civilized 
man is gradually driving these larger animals 



1 Cummin g, R. Gordon : Ten Years of a Hunter's Life in the 
Far Interior of South Africa. 2 vols. New York, 1850. 

Baldwin, William C. : African Hunting, from Natal to the Zam- 
besi. New York, 1863. 

Hamilton, Charles : Sketches of Life and Sport in Southeastern 
Africa. London, 1870. 

Chapman, James : Travels in the Interior of South Africa. 2 
vols. London, 1868. 

Gilmore, Parker: The Great Thirst-Land. Second edition. 
London. 

Sandeman, E. F. : Eight Months in an Ox- Waggon. London, 
1880. 



lect. x.] KARROOS. 385 

towards the interior; yet a daring Nimrod like 
Gordon Cumming has even now only to go far- 
ther inland, toward Central Africa, to find game 
and perilous adventure to his heart's content. 

Two parallel mountain-ranges have been spoken 
of. Between those ranges is a tract aggregating 
twenty thousand square miles, called Karroo, or 
" dry," because for nine months of the year there 
is no vegetation. Full one half the surface of 
Southern Africa is of that description. These 
Karroo valleys, covered w T ith a yellowish soil, be- 
come nearly as hard as brick ; but no sooner do 
rains begin to fall than the desert plains clothe 
themselves as if by magic with gorgeous flowers, 
and with herbage which invites the flocks and 
herds. It is on the terraced table-land by which 
the outer mountain-chain breaks down toward the 
seacoast, that groups of missionary stations have 
been established by Moravians, which, with those 
of other Christian bodies, are beginning to change 
the moral aspect of the country. The dews and 
rains of heaven have begun to descend, and the 
day is coming when "the wilderness and the soli- 
tary place shall be glad for them, and the desert 
shall rejoice and blossom as the rose; it shall 
blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and 
singing." 

Neighboring colonists, in not a few instances, 
have been much benefited spiritually, and have 
acknowledged their indebtedness to the Chris- 

25 



386 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

tian conduct of Hottentot servants as well as 
Moravian missionaries. The general good be- 
havior of the Koi-Koin (Hottentots) at Genaden- 
dal was so marked as to attract the attention of 
Dutch magistrates, and at length to conquer the 
confidence and commendation of some of them. 
One official, Mr. Rheynefeld, testified before the 
Governor that "the mission at Bavian's Kloof 
had existed now ten years ; that about one thou- 
sand Hottentots lived there, and distinguished 
themselves by their obedience to the missionaries 
and their orderly conduct, so that he never had 
any complaints from that quarter. They did not 
want a justice of the peace, though in other 
places, wherever three hundred people got to- 
gether, a justice had enough to do." In 1833, 
there was a religious awakening among the farm- 
ers in the neighborhood of Genadendal, who were 
glad to sit down beside the once-despised Hotten- 
tots, and with them feed upon the same spiritual 
food. English visitors have paid deserved com- 
pliments to the mission. Sir John Barrow says: x 
"On Sundays they all regularly attend the per- 
formance of divine service, and it is astonishing 
how ambitious they are to appear at church neat 
and clean. Of about three hundred that composed 
the congregation, about half were dressed in coarse 
printed cottons, and the other half in the ancient 

1 Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, I, 353. 



lect.x.] OUTSIDE WITNESSES. 387 

sheepskin dresses; and it appeared on inquiry 
that the former were the first who had been 
brought within the pale of the church — a proof 
that their external circumstances, at least, had 
suffered nothing 1 from, their change of life." A 
similar report was afterwards made by Lord C. 
Somerset (1817) and others. Even Colonel E. E. 
Napier, 1 Mr. Burchell, 2 and Dr. Lichtenstein, 3 not- 
withstanding their undisguised dislike or hostility 
to missionaries in general, speak favorably of this 
Moravian establishment. The reputation of Gen- 
adendal as an inviting spot spread far and wide 
among the natives. From time to time, Koi-Koin 
would come long distances to enjoy its privileges 
— for example (1801), a whole family from the 
borders of Kafirland, their journey requiring six 
weeks* time ; also a company of twenty-three from 
a remoter part of the land. 

It was in the course of 1823 that, owing to a 
request from the Government, Hemel-en-Aarde, 4 a 

1 Excursions in Southern Africa. 2 vols. 

2 Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, 

3 Travels in Southern Africa. 

4 " Sky and Earth/' seventy miles east from Cape Town, 
twelve miles from Caledon, and not far from the sea ; removed 
to Robben Island, 1846; placed in the hands of the English 
Church, 1867. Mr. W. Moister appears not to be aware of this 
last arrangement. He says : " A Moravian missionary has also 
been employed at Robin Island for many years, under the aus- 
pices of Government, in ministering to the lepers and other poor 
sufferers located there." Africa : Past and Present. London, 
1879. 



388 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

leper hospital, became a mission station, and much 
faithful labor was performed there. A less in- 
viting field can hardly be imagined than that 
refuge of wasting sufferers and mere relics of 
humanity — deformed, crippled, and loathsome 
beyond expression. For simple garden opera- 
tions, one patient would supplement another. A 
man who had no hands might be seen carrying 
on his back another who had lost both his feet, 
but who could drop seeds into the ground with 
the member which was wanting to his fellow- 
sufferer. The faith and efforts of Moravians in 
behalf of these wretched inmates were blessed. 
"Amongst the poor sufferers in that lazar-house," 
says one of the Brethren, on paying a visit, 
" there are many dear souls who rejoice in the 
Lord their God, and the assurance of a better 
world, and, relying on their Saviour's merits, 
watch their diseased tabernacles falling to pieces, 
in the hope of soon being with him in glory. It 
makes one shudder to visit the patients in their 
dwellings, such pitiable objects do they present, 
and so offensive is the effluvia ; yet, when you 
enter into conversation with them on the con- 
cerns of their souls, and find these poor cripples 
full of faith and joyful confidence in the Saviour's 
merits, it makes you feel ashamed of your fastidi- 
ousness." During the first six years of Super- 
intendent Leitner's connection with the hospital, 
ninety-four adults were baptized. The institu- 



lect. x.] BUSHMEST. 389 

tion had a large space of ground enclosed with 
a high wall, and only one entrance, which was 
strictly guarded. The leper who entered that 
gate might never return. The mistake has been 
made of supposing that the same was also true 
of missionaries in charge, and that their entrance 
upon service was a perpetual renunciation of the 
outside world. But that is entirely inaccurate. 
No hindrance existed to their free egress. At- 
tempts have been made more than once by Mo- 
ravian writers to correct this misapprehension, 
though without success. The touch of romance 
involved will probably keep the unfounded state- 
ment afloat ; so, too, the reputed incident of 
missionaries selling themselves into slavery on 
the West India Islands, as the only way of gain- 
ing access to Africans in bondage there. The 
actual heroism and self-denial of Moravians re- 
quire no fictitious adjuncts. 

There is a South-African bird 1 which serves 
as guide to the natives for finding honey. So, 
here and there, a stray messenger has indicated 
even to despised Bushmen where that might be 
found which is " sweeter than honey and the 
honeycomb." One of this abject race gave her 
reason for resorting to Genadendal, thus : "I am 
come because I know that Bavian's Kloof is an 



1 Cuculus indicator, of a light color, and the size of a chaf- 
finch. 



390 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

asylum for poor, distressed sinners ; such a sinner 
I am. I have lived long in sin, and done much 
evil; and among the farmers, with whom I am 
now in service, I have seen and heard nothing 
else; but now I am tired of the service of sin, 
and seek rest for my soul." The Bushmen, 1 it 
need hardly be said, are inferior in condition even 
to the Koi-Koin. Few races lower on the human 
scale can be found. They are probably a distinct 
aboriginal race, though their classification is not 
yet clearly determined. They and the Hotten- 
tots appear to represent the only remnants of 
the earliest inhabitants of Africa, which have 
been pushed forward, reduced and nearly crushed 
by the Bantu family. Their language, including 
the clicks, differs from that of the Koi-Koin. 
They have the flat nose, concave visage, and keen 
eye; their skin is a leathery yellow, greatly 
wrinkled even in early life. They belong to the 
pigmy races, wherever their conditions of life 
are unfriendly, as in bondage to the Boers and 
Bechuanas, and in wilder and more sterile regions, 
as on the great Kalihari Desert. Their average 
stature is four feet and a half; that of the women 
four feet. They are children of desolation and 
isolation, the gypsies of the South, having no 
fixed abode. Filthy habits characterize them. 



1 In Dutch, Boschjesmen, " Men of the Bush." One vernacu- 
lar designation of them is San, the plural of Sab, 



lect. x.] BUSHMEN. 391 

They are skillful in using the arrow and the trap ; 
are crafty and sagacious ; have no domestic ani- 
mals save a half-wild dog. They even possess 
some artistic skill. From the Cape of Good 
Hope to the Orange River, may be seen, in caves 
and on cliffs, figures of men and animals, sketched 
with a firm hand in red, brown, white and black 
colors — sketches truer to nature than many 
which are to be seen on Egyptian monuments. 
When absent from their caves for a night, the 
Bushmen cover themselves with sand, or make 
a shelter of branches and brushwood in a thicket. 
Not ^infrequently they are compelled to feed on 
ants' eggs, locusts and snakes; and in general 
theirs is a condition of physical misery more 
extreme than we can easily conceive. They have 
no civil organization, no chiefs, but are the 
Pariahs of Southern Africa, the common enemy 
of neighboring tribes ; and only where the Hot- 
tentot, the Kafir, and the European cannot sub- 
sist, are they allowed to maintain a dreary abode. 
Like the Hottentots, they have neither temple 
nor altar, nor scarcely any vestige of religion. 
The Dutch farmers, formerly at least, were accus- 
tomed to regard them, as some in our country 
have regarded Indians, in the light of Canaanites, 
to be exterminated when they could not profit- 
ably be reduced to slavery. One Boer boasted 
that he had taken part in struggles which cost 
over two thousand seven hundred Bushmen their 



392 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

lives ; and another, that in six years he had 
caught and killed three thousand and two hun- 
dred of them. 

A century after the Dutch had landed, the 
system of " commandoes " began (1754). And 
what is a commando ? An armed raid, composed 
of Boers, 1 sometimes seconded by troops of the 
line, under order from a provincial magistrate to 
scour the country. The usual method was to 
come upon the natives by night, or early in the 
morning, and slaughter them indiscriminately. 
The chief inducement for the Boers to engage in 
these abominable forays was the prospect of cap- 
turing women and children for their service. To 
cite a few instances : One commando (1774), 
under Van Wyk, in the course of eight days, 
shot ninety-six Bushmen, the women and chil- 
dren being captured and distributed as slaves 
among the Boers ; another, under Van der Mieroe, 
murdered one hundred and forty-two of the poor 
creatures ; yet another, after destroying the males, 
took one hundred and eighteen women captive. 
"I still shudder," says Thomas Pringle, 2 "when 
I think, of one of the first scenes of the kind 
which I was obliged to witness in my youth, when 
I commenced my burgher service. It was upon 

1 Boer, Dutch farmer or peasant, like the German Bauer, 
though not, like the English boor, conveying necessarily the idea 
of rudeness. 

2 Residence in South Africa, 78. 



lect. x.] COMMANDOES. 393 

a commando under Carl Kortz. We had sur- 
prised and destroyed a considerable kraal of Bos- 
jesmen. When the firing ceased, five women 
were still found living. The lives of these, after 
a long discussion, it was ordered to spare, because 
one farmer wanted a servant for this purpose, 
and another for that. The unfortunate wretches 
were ordered to march in front of the commando ; 
but it was soon found that they impeded our 
progress, not being able to proceed fast enough. 
They were therefore ordered to be shot. The 
scene which ensued often haunts me up to the 
present hour. The helpless victims, seeing what 
was intended, sprang to us, and clung so firmly 
to some of the party that it was for some time 
impossible to shoot them without hazarding the 
lives of those they held fast. Four of them were 
at length despatched, but the fifth could by no 
means be torn from one of our comrades, whom 
she had grasped in her agony; and his entreaties 
to be allowed to take the woman home were 
at last complied with. She went with her pre- 
server, served him long and faithfully, and, I 
believe, died in the family. May God forgive 
the land!" 

Expeditions of this kind were sent out regu- 
larly every year, and the numbers just given are 
below the average slaughter. In 1774, the Col- 
onial Government ordered that the entire race 
of Bushmen not already in servitude should be 



394 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

seized or extirpated, women and children alone 
having the doubtful clemency shown them of 
being made slaves. 

When once in the power of the Dutch farmers, 
what treatment did these captured natives re- 
ceive ? Not unfrequently the most cruel. Beat- 
ing, and cutting with the thongs of the rhinoceros- 
hide, were among the forms of punishment. In 
their cool brutality, masters would have lashes 
applied, not by number, but by time, while they 
were smoking a succession of pipes; and this 
method of " flogging by pipes " was particularly 
popular, as in the East India Colonies of the 
Dutch. If death ensued, no more account was 
made of it than if a dumb beast had died. Liable 
to be shot down at any time, like the hyena or 
the baboon, obliged in their outlawry to feed 
on vermin and roots of the wilderness, what con- 
dition of mind were they in toward the merciless 
intruders into their domain? Treat a man, Koi- 
Koin or Bushman, like a beast, and you make 
him one. Untutored natives, originally contented 
and peaceably disposed, were converted into vin- 
dictive enemies. Driven from their fields and 
fountains, robbed of their flocks and herds, their 
wives and children, what else could be expected 
than that they should be transformed into exas- 
perated savages, ready for retaliation by plunder 
and by the poisoned arrow? 

The difficulty of reaching these men of the 



lect.x.] COMMANDOES. 395 

desert and of the thicket, otherwise than with 
the rifle, has been greatly increased by the wrongs 
and cruelties of the Dutch period, and by a feel- 
ing of contempt and hopelessness in regard to 
them and to the Hottentots on the part of many 
English residents, especially in the early times 
of their colonial tenure. While the Moravians 
have established no missionary stations exclu- 
sively for them, individuals and families have 
been received at the settlements, have been re- 
claimed from barbarism; and, poisoned arrows 
thrown away, they may be seen, clothed and in 
their right mind, sitting at the Saviour's feet. 
Nor is this degraded people destitute of quick 
perception, and of other mental capabilities which 
may command respect. " Why is it," said a Bush- 
man in an address at a missionary station, where 
some colonists were present, " why is it that we 
are persecuted and oppressed by Christians? Is 
it because we live in desert lands, clothe our- 
selves with skins, and feed on locusts and wild 
honey? Is there anything morally better in one 
kind of raiment or in one kind of food than 
another ? Was not John the Baptist a Bushman ? 
Did he not dwell in a wilderness? Was he not 
clothed with a leathern girdle, such as we wear ? 
And did he not feed on locusts and wild honey ? 
Was he not a Bushman ? ... It is true, John the 
Baptist was beheaded ; but he was not beheaded 
because he was a Bushman, but because he was 



S96 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect x. 

a faithful preacher; and where, then, do the 
Christian men find anything in the precepts or 
examples of their religion to justify them for 
robbing and shooting us because we are Bush- 
men?" 1 No rude barbarian is it who can make 
such an appeal. 

Genaclendal, the oldest and still the largest- 
missionary establishment in South Africa, has 
naturally been mentioned more often than any 
other in the preceding lecture. It is a repre- 
sentative station ; and, if no other had been oc- 
cupied by the United Brethren, this might well 
deserve all the time we have devoted to it. The 
mission in the western section of the Cape Colony 
has other stations — for instance, Mamre, already 
spoken of, and till 1854 known as Groenekloof ; 
Elim, twenty miles from Cape Agulhas, estab- 
lished 1824 ; Goedverwacht, with the neighboring 
Wittewater, forty miles north of Mamre (1859) ; 
and Berea, near Genadenclal, recently established 
(1865). These places have the advantage of 
being well supplied with water, and, while the 
neighboring lands are not fertile, yet, being irri- 
gated, they are made productive. At Genaclendal 
is a valuable institution for training native help- 
ers, established in 1838. At all these stations 
there are chapels and schoolhouses ; at two of 
them, smiths' forges, shops for carpenters, wheel- 
wrights and for manufacturing coarse cutlery. 

1 Philip* s Researches, II, 12, 13. 



lect.x.] KAFIR TRIBES. 397 

Mention has hitherto been made only of the 
western, the chief- field of Moravian labor, that 
among the Koi-Koin and the limited number of 
Bushmen mingling with them. But Kafirs, 1 the 
dominant race of South Africa, have also shared, 
though for a shorter time and with less success, 
in the efforts of these persevering missionaries. 
The Kafirs are a nomadic, warlike, predatory peo- 
ple; tall, well-formed, with some resemblance to 
Caucasians ; as to color, dark brown ; the hair 
woolly, though they do not belong to the negro 
family. Their language, as in all other tongues 
south of the equator (those of the Koi-Koin and 
Bushmen excepted), places the qualifying syllable 
before the chief root, yet does not dispense with 
suffixes. Like others of the same Bantu stock, it 
is rich in vowel-sounds, euphonious and flowing. 
Unlike the two peoples we have chiefly considered 
thus far, they have compact civil organizations, 
and, in half a dozen or more wars with the Eng- 
lish, have shown capacity and determination. 
They are cheerful, but irritable ; inveterate liars 
and beggars; no less superstitious than neighbors 
who are mentally inferior, being in bondage to 
witch-doctors and rain-makers. Their superior 
stamina has enabled them to withstand the usual 

1 This is not properly an ethnographic term, but an Arabic 
word, denoting " unbeliever," with respect to Islam. The true 
form, Kafir, now seems likely to supplant the older forms of 
Caffre and Kaffir. 



398 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. x 

tendency to diminution upon the contact of a sav- 
age with a civilized race. 1 The Dutch, in their 
days of colonial rule, learned to respect Kafir 
courage, though not till after they had made ex- 
periment in outrages similar to those perpetrated 
upon less capable native tribes. 

In 1818, the Moravians established Enon as an 
advanced post for efforts among the Kafirs. It is 
in the Valley of the Witterivier, a small tributary 
of Zondag (Sunday) River, fortj^-five miles north 
of Mamre, at the base of the Zuurenberg Moun- 
tains. The valley is ten miles in length, and the 
neighboring hills are broken into dells or kloofs. 
The region abounds in forests ; the fragrant Afri- 
can yellow-wood, euphorbias, parasitical plants, 
jasmines and geraniums, diversifying the scenery. 
In the Kafir war of 1885, the community were 
obliged to flee from the place. In later native 
uprisings, the same has been repeated ; and yet, in 
the war of 1846-47, it was the only missionary 
post which escaped devastation. In 1828, labor 
was begun at Shiloh, about five hundred miles 
east of Genadendal, on Klipplaat River, then out- 
side the Cape Colony, in what is now British Kaf- 
fraria. This was by request from the Tambookies, 

1 The Kafirs despise Hottentots, Bushmen, Malays and other 
people of color, on account of their not being circumcised. On 
this account they regard them as boys, and will not allow them 
to sit in their company, or to eat with them. Lichtenstein' s Trav- 
els in Southern Africa, I, 56. 



lect.x.] EASTERN MISSION. 399 

a Kafir tribe, which holds that neighborhood. Af- 
terwards, the stations Mamre and Goshen 1 (1850) 
were opened on the borders of Kaffraria. A party 
of predatory Fetkannas the next year committed 
murders and carried off cattle ; which gave occa- 
sion for a fine utterance from one of the Hottentot 
keepers, Hendrick Benkes, whose entire stock, 
valued at nine hundred dollars, was stolen: "I 
hope one day to assist in bringing the gospel to 
the Fetkannas themselves." Still later (1859), 
we find Engotine, on the streamlet Engoti, which 
empties into the Ossen Kraal, at no great distance 
from Shiloh. 

A movement was begun (1839) in behalf of the 
Fingoes, a fugitive Kafir tribe, who came within 
the colony for the sake of English protection 
(1835). That station, called Clarkson, formerly 
Koksbosch, is in the Zitzikamma, and belongs to 
the Western Mission. The Kafir races, robust, 
restless, unscrupulous, given to rapine and blood- 
shed, do not present the most promising field for 
quiet Moravian approaches; though, among the 
Tambookies especially, there has been a fair 
amount of success. 

Labor in behalf of these tribes is not of as long 
standing, nor has it been thus far as successful, as 
among the Koi-Koin. Sir Benjamin D'Urban 



1 At first called Sichem on Windvogelberg, not far from 
Shiloh. 



400 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect. x. 

says: "I used the words ' irreclaimable savages' 
advisedly; they convey my mature opinion, and I 
am disposed neither to modify nor to retract it." 
Alongside such a declaration we would place the 
testimony of an aged Kafir woman, Anne Adams: 
" When I hear the gospel, I feel something in my 
heart to which I can give no other name than 
peace. When I enjoy the holy communion, I 
would rather immediately depart out of the world 
that I might be at home with our Saviour, who 
shed his blood and died for me." We would 
summon another Kafir woman, Wilhelmina Stomp- 
jes, who wept over the sins of her people, and 
who labored earnestly and successfully for the 
enlightenment and conversion of many individ- 
uals. A missionary not given to exaggeration 
says : x " The strong and admirable features of her 
Christian character, her intense love for her Kafir 
countrymen, and her mastery of the language of 
the people, gave her a great advantage over the 
missionaries, who could only hold intercourse 
with them by the aid of an interpreter, and she 
faithfully used it in all humility for the further- 
ance of the Lord's work. With a warm heart and 
overflowing lips, she would tell of the love of God 
'in Jesus Christ. Her word had such weight even 
with the proud chiefs that they were often swayed 
by it, and did not deem it beneath their dignity to 

1 Quoted by Carlyle : South-African Mission Fields, 123, 124. 



lect. x.] SPECIAL TKIALS. 401 

send special messengers to the lowly maiden in 
the missionaries' household." In one instance 
the missionaries would probably have been cut off 
but for her. A fierce Tambookie chief, Mapasa, 
with a band of fifty armed men, came to the set- 
tlement, bent on its destruction. Pressing through 
the group of savages, each of whom held his spear 
ready to strike at a word from the chief, she, with 
undaunted courage, reproached Mapasa for appear- 
ing in such warlike fashion, and ordered him to 
depart, The fierce and cruel chieftain, completely 
overcome by her manner, instead of killing the 
missionaries and the woman who dared intrude on 
an assembly of men, withdrew peacefully, and 
apologized later for his conduct. Did Sir Ben- 
jamin D' Urban ever exhibit more of heroism than 
Wilhelmina, or a more evident Christian character 
than either of these two women, though they be- 
longed to the race which he was pleased to persist 
in denominating " irreclaimable savages ?" A later 
Governor, Sir Harry Smith, uses very different lan- 
guage, declaring that the frontier would be better 
guarded by nine mission-stations than by nine mil- 
itary posts. "I have been," says he, "in many 
fine churches, but my heart has never been so 
touched as it was in this humble temple of God in 
the wilderness, in which black people and white 
sit side by side as brethren in Christ." 

Mission work in South Africa is prosecuted 
under discouraging liabilities other than those 

26 



402 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.x. 

already dwelt upon, such as the devastation of 
floods, the ravages of locusts, the failure of crops, 
the plundering forays of hostile neighbors, and 
the demoralizing influence of frequent wars. One 
is reminded, too, of " wild beasts at Ephesus." 
Missionary Schmit, of Enon, was one day, with a 
party of Hottentots, in pursuit of hyenas which 
had been making depredations among their flocks. 
The hounds started a leopard, which sprang upon 
a native and overpowered him. In attempting 
to aid the Hottentot, Mr. Schmit drew the ani- 
mal's attention to himself, and received the full 
brunt of a furious attack, with no opportunity 
to use his gun. The ferocious creature seized 
him by the left arm, and with his paws tore 
the clothes from the missionary's breast. After 
receiving another bite or two, he grasped the 
animal with his right hand by the throat, and, 
being a powerful man, held him for a few min- 
utes till one of the natives, hearing his cries in 
the jungle, came to the rescue, and shot the 
leopard through the heart. So terribly was the 
missionary lacerated, that for weeks his life was 
in the greatest clanger. 

By dint of faith and quiet, persistent toil, the 
Moravian Brethren have effected much. Even 
sixty or more years ago, Henry Marsveld, one 
of those humble men who went out in 1792 to 
renew the work at Genadendal, could say (1818) : 
"I have had the favor to baptize four hundred 



lect. x.] RESULTS. 403 

and fifteen Hottentots. ... It is now twenty-five 
years since we began, in weakness and poverty 
of spirit, to preach to the people here ; and we 
immediately experienced that the Lord most 
graciously owned and blessed our labors, opening 
the hearts of the Hottentots, so that his sav- 
ing gospel found entrance. Many of them have 
departed this life with joy, in full reliance on 
his merits. Four hundred and seventy-seven lie 
in our burying-ground. How shall I rejoice, when 
I behold this large number assembled around His 
throne, to see others coming ! All is of grace 
and remains mere grace." During the same 
period, upwards of fourteen hundred Hottentots, 
Kafirs, and other heathen had received the seal- 
ing ordinance. In the community at Genadendal, 
that radiating center, there are now (1882) be- 
tween four and five thousand persons; while in 
the whole Western Province there are, at seven 
stations and out-stations, twenty European and 
two native missionaries, more than fifty native 
helpers, and over two thousand (2,157) commu- 
nicants. These, it will be kept in mind, once 
belonged to Sir Benjamin D'Urban's "irreclaim- 
able savages." In the Eastern Province are fiVe 
hundred and ninety-two communicants; in the 
two Provinces, Eastern and Western, are found 
about twenty-five schools and twenty-five hun- 
dred scholars, and at fourteen different stations 
more than eleven thousand (11,704) souls, of 



404 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. x. 

whom 2,749 are communicant members, under 
the immediate pastoral direction of the United 
Brethren. 

The Moravian Brethren themselves engage in 
mechanical or farming occupations, the profits 
of which are always carried to the account of 
the mission. Their example and teaching have 
a most persuasive influence; so that natives, 
proverbial for idleness and inefficiency, like the 
Koi-Koin, or for contempt of labor, like the Kafirs, 
come to engage industriously in agriculture and 
various handicrafts. The chief monument of 
Hottentot skill is a bridge, one hundred and 
eighty feet long, over the Sonclerend, supported 
by five massive piers and capable of sustaining 
loaded wagons. It is entirely the work of natives. 
When the Sonderend in one instance was at its 
highest, a farmer who had just passed the bridge 
met a Hottentot standing by. He began, as 
usual, to rail at the poor man, and at the laziness 
of the Hottentots of Genadendal. The Hottentot, 
pointing to the bridge, replied : " Baas, I do not 
choose to answer; let that bridge speak for us. 
If baas had built it for me, and I could without 
trouble walk and ride over it, I should not ven- 
ture to complain of baas's laziness; for I should 
think that it required more diligence and labor 
to build a bridge than to ride over it." The 
farmer was mute. 

This part of the missionary world, like every 



lect.x.] HOSTILE CKITICS. 405 

other, has had its occasional critics — men igno- 
rant apparently of the need, the nature and the 
power of Christianity ; men whose mask of philan- 
thropy is too thin to hide their indifference or 
hostility to revealed religion. Like the Boer 
at the bridge, they have been quite ready to avail 
themselves of conveniences which missionary toil 
and native civilization supply, and then repay 
by criticism and misrepresentation, if not cal- 
umny. More largely than any other denomina- 
tion, the Moravians escape such detraction, but 
not wholly. Three quarters of a century have 
passed since Dr. Lichtenstein, afterwards Pro- 
fessor of Natural History in the University of 
Berlin, having been in the Dutch service at the 
Cape, was retained apparently as an apologist 
and eulogist of the old order of things. So invet- 
erate is his prejudice that, upon only the most 
superficial acquaintance, he speaks thus of native 
converts : " They could sing and pray, and be 
heartily penitent for their sins, and talk of the 
Lamb of the Atonement, but none were really 
better for all this specious appearance." 1 On the 
most celebrated of early Christian laborers in 
South Africa he pronounces judgment : " It ap- 
pears to me that Vanderkemp is of little value 
as a missionary;" 2 and the Professor volunteers 
a brief sketch: "When the Cape was taken by 

x Travels, I, 236. 2 Ibid, 239. 



406 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

the English, he resolved, though then sixty years 
of age, to go out as a missionary to the Caffirs; 
and, being ordained at Oxford, he came here in 
1797. After two years spent among these people, 
in which he says himself he has not accomplished 
much toward the spread of Christianity, the war 
broke out. He came for a while to Cape Town, 
but, at his return to the Caffirs, was not favorably 
received, and was obliged again to quit their 
territories." The value of Lichtenstein's opinion 
is to be measured by the accuracy of his state- 
ments. In the passage just quoted, which does 
not occupy seven lines of a quarto edition, we 
have five mistakes. Dr. Vanderkemp was not 
more than fifty years of age when he offered 
himself to go out as missionary ; he was not 
ordained at Oxford ; he did not visit Cape Town 
after his return from Kafirland ; he was not un- 
favorably received on his second visit to the 
Kafirs, nor was he obliged to quit their terri- 
tories. 1 

Of a later period is Lieutenant-Colonel Napier, 
who makes his flings at missionaries as "a set 
of needy and ignorant adventurers," " miserable 
adventurers," "idle vagabonds or senseless fanat- 
ics." His estimate of the natives is indicated by 
an approving quotation from Gibbon, who " some- 
where remarks that the Hottentots of old ap- 

x Philip's Researches, I, 95, note. 



lect.x.] HOSTILE CRITICS. 40T 

peared to form the connecting link between the 
human species and the brute creation." But 
the Colonel kindly favors us with his theory of 
gospel promulgation : " If we must, nolens volens, 
cram religion down the throats of savages before 
civilization has rendered them capable of compre- 
hending its purpose, at least let the attempt 
be made by persons competent, from a clerical 
education, for such an undertaking." 1 We are 
laid under obligations more recent and hardly 
less weighty by Mr. Charles Hamilton, 2 who 
appears to be an admirer of Bishop Colenso. His 
contempt vents itself on the missionary in terms 
no less guarded and choice than these : " He 
knows nothing whatever, and is incapable of 
knowing anything, of human nature, whether 
white or black. ... If the missionary is of no 
service to his countrymen, he is of still less to the 
Kaffir. ... I believe a far greater amount of 
harm than good arises from the unfortunate 
prejudices and ignorance that so often accompany 
missionary labors. ... I believe it to be so be- 
cause the men whom I saw could have had no 
sort of moral or educational fitness for the work 
they had undertaken." As to just what would 
constitute moral fitness for evangelistic labor, we. 
are left in the dark; but Mr. Hamilton supplies 

1 Excursions in Southern Africa, I, x, 166-173 ; II, 183. 

2 Sketches of Life and Sport in Southeastern Africa, 90, 91, 150. 
London, 1876 



408 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.x. 

a clue to his own ethical standard. " My rule," 
he remarks, "at that time, was one which much 
observation and travel, with some sacrifice of 
early opinion to modern conveniences, has modi- 
fied, that no white man ought to starve when 
a black man can supply his wants." 1 The inci- 
dent illustrating his code of morals, elaborated in 
travels and observation so extensive, is one which 
he gives with evident satisfaction at his own 
smartness — his securing and appropriating a fowl 
belonging to a native. It is not intimated that 
any remuneration was made. The circumstance 
that the South- African had a skin not colored like 
his own, and was withal a woman, changed the 
character of the act entirely, making it not only 
right, but manly and plucky withal. 

What, now, have the apostles of civilization sim- 
ple and pure ever done, or what are they likely 
to do, for savage races ? Where are the polished 
philanthropists who, in their contemptuous pre- 
judice, repudiating evangelical missions, stand all 
ready, with plow and printing-press, to start for 
the dark places of the earth which are so full 
of the habitations of cruelty? Let their names 
be handed in. If any men holding to this mis- 
taken idea, that civilization must precede Chris- 
tianity, are prepared to put the theory to the 
test, they are men of Christian principle and 

1 Sketches of Life and Sport in Southeastern Africa, 115. 



lect.xo MERE CIVILIZATION. 409 

devotion. The Dark Continent is not without 
an experiment of that kind. Eighty years ago, 
the English Methodists, under the leadership of 
Dr. Coke, entertained a scheme for introducing 
civilization among the Foulahs of Western Africa. 
A number of well-disposed artisans of various 
descriptions were engaged to go out under the 
idea that, after some progress had been made in 
civilization, missionaries should be sent to preach 
the gospel. William Wilberforce and some other 
leading men of the day lent their patronage, 
and great expectations were awakened ; but the 
scheme proved a complete failure. When the 
agents reached Sierra Leone, their courage failed. 
They had not strength of motive sufficient to 
carry them out among the savages. 1 The con- 
straining power of love for the souls of perish- 
ing heathen men is required to establish even 
philanthropic men among a barbarous people ; 
and nothing will so soon start such a people on 
the high road of social and material improvement 
as the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

In South Africa, civilization had the field, for 
more than a hmndred years, all to itself; and 
what did it achieve? 2 It robbed the natives of 

1 Evidence on the Aborigines, 1837, 124. 

2 Even under the improved administration of later years, Gaika 
could not help saying, notwithstanding his obligations to the Col- 
onial Government, " When I look at the large extent of fine coun- 
try that has been taken from me, I am compelled to say that, 
though protected, I am rather oppressed by my protection." 



410 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.x. 

their lands ; it reduced them to virtual or actual 
slavery; it debauched them with ardent spirits; 
it formed illicit connections, by which both Eu- 
ropeans and natives are degraded ; in the spirit 
of a Cortez and Pizarro, it has boldly declared 
that savage Kafirs should be made to sink before 
industrious men of a superior race. 1 When hard- 
working United Brethren, after twenty years of 
toil, had created a little paradise of comparative 
civilization at Shiloh, Europeans, chiefly English- 
men, importuned the Governor to send the Mo- 
ravians away into the heart of the Kafir country, 
and to hand over Shiloh, with its fruitful fields, 
beautiful watercourses, and neat dwellings, to 
them. 2 Of such unutterable meanness have civ- 
ilized men in South Africa been capable. But 
Sir Harry Smith, to whom that application was 
made, was not a man to countenance barefaced 
robbery. Other Colonial Governors, as Sir Pere- 
grine Maitland, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and Sir 
Bartle Frere, have spoken in highest terms of 
missionaries and the results of their labors, and 
have lent important aid, personal and govern- 
mental. Yes, Christianity came? at length; and, 
in half the time that mere civilized men had been 
doing little besides selfishly consulting their own 
interests, and making themselves a scourge to na- 



1 Freeman's Tour in South Africa, 212. 

2 History of Shiloh, 2G. 



lect.x.] PATIEKT WAITING. 411 

tive tribes, it has accomplished a noble work. In- 
cluding the results of all Protestant missions in 
South Africa, there are now one hundred and 
eighty thousand adherents, of whom thirty-five 
thousand are communicants. 

But the end is not yet, nor is it near. Years of 
toil, faith and praj^er must pass before the work 
will be finished. "Long patience" is a quality 
which the United Brethren have had occasion to 
cultivate on every foreign field where they have 
been, and here no less than elsewhere. At this 
southern extremity of the continent, there are 
many plants having spines and hooks. One of 
them is a well-known bush with recurving thorns, 
which make sad havoc of the clothes, if not of the 
flesh, whenever any one comes in contact with it, 
the Acacia detinens, and called by the Dutch 
Wacht-een-beetje, " Wait-a-bit." No man can have 
much experience in evangelistic movements among 
any native race there, without finding himself of- 
ten admonished, Wait a while. Early Portuguese 
explorers set up stone crosses, but not a soul was 
the better for that svmboL Christ and him cruci- 
fiecl have at last been preached, and the regenera- 
tion of the continent is begun. Bartholemew 
Diaz, the discoverer, named the southern point 
Cabo Tormentoso ; King John II, of Portugal, 
changed the name to Cabo cle buon Esperanza. 
Morally, too, the Cape of Storms has become the 
Cape of Good Hope. 



LECTURE XL 

MISSION TO AUSTRALIA. 



MISSION TO AUSTRALIA, 



We were last in South Africa. The Cape of 
Good Hope, six thousand miles from Liverpool, is 
midway to Australia, while Australia lies midway 
between that Cape and Cape Horn. If we make 
the coast circuit of this rounded mass, formerly 
called New Holland, Ave shall sail a distance equal 
to one third of the circumference of our globe ; 
we shall sail round an area equal to the United 
States exclusive of Alaska, nearly equal to Europe, 
and ten times the size of Borneo, the largest island 
in the world. We shall find but few gulfs, and 
very few rivers ; even its largest stream, the 
Murray River, although running two thousand 
miles, and with its affluents draining a basin 
equal to the whole of France, yet hardly connects 
with the sea. Most of the streams resolve them- 
selves, during the dry season, into a series of pools, 
marshes, or dry beds. So, too, with many of the 
lakes, some of which become brackish. Of all the 
great divisions I of the earth, Australia is the most 
imperfectly watered, and the most scantily fur- 

1 The extreme length is 2,500 miles east and west ; the great- 
est width, 1,960 miles. 

(415) 



416 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

nislied with animal life. On the southern coast, 
there is a reach of more than five hundred miles, 
along which not one drop of water finds its way 
to the sea. A coastwise mountain-range of very 
moderate height confronts the Indian Ocean on 
the west, and a more elevated range — the highest 
peak of which, however, does not exceed seven 
thousand feet — faces the Pacific on the east. 
No active volcano has been discovered. The 
interior seems to be a vast concave plain, sparse- 
ly supplied with trees, extremely dry and hot. 
Though somewhat less than half the area lies 
within the tropics, it was supposed, like Central 
Africa formerly, to be a vast desert, till later 
explorations corrected the mistake. Rains, which 
come irregularly, fall, for the most part, suddenly; 
some of the rivers rising at once fifty or more 
feet, but the water is soon absorbed. 

Australia must be regarded as the most peculiar 
of the six continents. Its remarkable vegetation 
is quite its own ; far the greater part of the plants 
are found nowhere else, while not a few of those 
most frequent in other countries are entirely 
wanting. 1 The fern-brake is the only one com- 
mon to this continent and to Europe. Scarcely 
an edible fruit or vegetable that is indigenous 
can be found, except to the north; nor is there 
a single native plant suited to agriculture. Noc- 

1 Hooker: Flora of Australia, xxvii. 



lect. xi.] FLORA. 41T 

turnal plants are more numerous than in any- 
other part of the world; most of the trees are 
evergreens, and the timber is of greater specific 
gravity than water. The tulip, lily and honey- 
suckle, for instance, are trees of no inconsiderable 
size. Few plants have any perfume. Foliage, 
of which there is great poverty, is leathery, dull 
and sombre, and the same hues remain without 
change from season to season. Of the Acacia, 
some species are devoid of leaves, and have only 
long, jointed branchlets. For the most part, 
leaves are peculiarly attenuated, and turn edge- 
wise toward the light, so that trees furnish almost 
no shade. The statement sometimes made that 
the leaves of the trees are wood, and their wood 
iron, is not inappropriate as regards many of 
them. 1 Trees of the myrtle family (Eucalypti) 
abound ; and, of that family, the gum-tree is the 
highest in the world, attaining more than two 
hundred feet, 2 the stem, like a column, destitute 
half the way of all limbs. One species annually 
shed their bark instead of their leaves. There is 
a nettle-tree so deadly as to paralyze the traveler's 
horse. 3 

1 Wilkes : Exploring Expedition, II, 165. 

2 " In Victoria and Gippsland glens, the gaunt Eucalypti hide 
their nakedness in their crowded proximity ; they tower to 
heights of over four hundred feet, and challenge California in 
their gigantic length of stem." Ranken : Dominion of Australia, 
128. 

3 Ranken: Dominion of Australia, 43. 

27 



418 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

The forms of animal life are no less peculiar. 
There are birds that can sustain life without 
water. There is a white falcon ; while a black 
swan gives the lie to an old Roman proverb. 1 
This is the home of the Emu, an enormous bird 
without wings; also the home of the harp-bird. 
There is one kind of bird that constructs tu- 
muli, sometimes five feet in height and thirty 
in length, built with the feet, which are large 
and have a peculiar prehensile power. These 
mounds are for the eggs, which, being placed in 
layers, are hatched by heat generated in part 
from decomposition. 2 The water-mole (Platy- 
pus), a creature covered with fur, yet having 
four webbed feet and the bill of a duck, is a 
great anomaly. The most numerous quadrupeds 
are such as we find least frequently anywhere 
else. There are no monkeys, no beasts of prey, 
and only one native animal, the dingo (Austra- 
lian dog), that has ever been domesticated by 
the natives. Of the mammals, more than three 
fourths belong to the low marsupial type, 3 of 
which there is but a single kind, our opossum, 
in any other country. The female has a "soft, 
warm, well-lined, portable nursery pocket," in 
which the young, comparatively immature at their 

1 Nigro simillima cygno. 

2 Stokes : Discoveries in Australia, I, 395. 

3 All but thirty out of one hundred and thirty-one species. 
The remainder are bats, rodents, etc. 



lect.xi.] THE FAUNA. 419 

birth, are quartered. Of these creatures, one 
kind is smaller than a mouse ; another, the kan- 
garoo, moves only with a jump from six to ten 
feet high, and a distance of fifteen to thirty feet. 
The entire absence of large animals and of ungu- 
late animals, which are essential to higher civiliza- 
tion, was a noticeable feature before occupation 
by European colonists. 

Not only was Australia the last to be intro- 
duced into the family of continents, but develop- 
ment would seem to have been prematurely ar- 
rested, as if it were an unfinished quarter of the 
world and behindhand. Its forms of animal and 
vegetable life are like certain fossil remains of 
more advanced regions. 1 Yet Australia has great 
mineral treasures — copper, tin and lead, silver, 
gold, and, more valuable than the gold-diggings, 
extensive coal-fields, some mines a thousand feet 
deep, and sufficient to supply the whole southern 
hemisphere. 2 

Politically, this new continent belongs to Great 
Britain. It is now two hundred years since the 



1 Dort die Natur in der Wiege, der Mensch kaum vom Thiere 
unterscheiden Neu-Holland ist ein Greis, nicht ein Kind, es 

filngt nicht zu athmen und zu leben an, es hat vielmehr gelebt und 
gewirkt, und neigt sich nun zum Grabe. linger : Neu-Holland, s. 
3,24. 

2 The yield from the latter has a value of five millions of dol- 
lars annually. In the northern mountains, iron is so abundant as 
violently to affect the magnetic needle. 



4f0 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, xi. 

English first made their appearance there (1688) ; 
yet it was not till a century later (1769-1777) 
that the celebrated Captain Cook first gave to 
his countrymen any reliable information regard- 
ing a portion of its coast and people. Three 
other nations, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the 
French, competed for possession. The earliest 
attempt at formal occupancy was the founding 
of a penal settlement in 1788, 1 known as Botany 
Bay, although the settlement was never there, 
but at Sydney, of which it is a swampy suburb 
several miles distant. At the present time, in- 
cluding Tasmania, there are six colonies under 
a constitutional government; composing the most 
important group of British colonial possessions, 
with a Governor, Council, and Legislature. Im- 
migrant colonists, chiefly from Great Britain, are 
found only on the coasts, except in the south- 
eastern regions of Victoria and New South Wales. 2 
This youngest of the continents, remaining prac- 
tically unknown to Europe for a century after 



1 The last convict-ship was sent out in 1840. 

2 " About forty years from the first landing of the colonists, 
the sheep-stock numbered ninety thousand head. There were, 
recently imported and increased, a flock of some three hundred 
merino sheep. This small flock has since increased and multi- 
plied, outnumbered and swallowed all other breeds, and spread 
over the whole Australian islands, to the number of nearly 
seventy millions. They have become pioneers of civilization, 
the absolute masters of the forest, and the foundation of an 
empire." Ranken : Dominion of Australia, 58. 



lect.xi.] ABORIGINES. 421 

Columbus's great discovery, even then continued 
for over two centuries with no internal advance. 
Germs of improvement were entirely wanting till 
an enterprising little island in the opposite hemi- 
sphere established a maritime connection, and in- 
troduced the element and impulse required for 
growth. During the last thirty years, exploration 
of the interior, as in Central Africa, has been 
pushed with vigor, though at the cost of valuable 
lives ; but now a telegraph passes through the 
heart of the continent, which is two thousand 
miles wide ; and, since the discovery of gold, 
growth has been almost unparalleled. Within 
the memory of men still living, and not the 
oldest either, the great harbor of Port Phillip 
was unknown; now the city of Melbourne, the 
capital of Victoria and chief emporium of Aus- 
tralia, and where till within less than fifty years 
the foot of white man never trod, has a popula- 
tion of two hundred thousand souls ; has a large 
public library; has a university, and so has Syd- 
ney, of which the degrees entitle to the same 
rank as those of any university in the United 
Kingdom. 

Like country, like people. While in natural 
history Australia is characterized by the least de- 
veloped forms, man seems also to be least removed 
from the brute. The aborigines resemble, yet dif- 
fer from, the Malays and from African negroes ; 
have a skin less dark — indeed, dusky or chocolate- 



422 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. xi 

color, ratlier than black; the forehead higher; 
the nose less depressed ; the lips thick, but not 
strikingly tumescent ; mouth wide and unsightly; 
eyes large, sunken and keen ; hair somewhat mat- 
ted, not woolly, but long and silky, more so even 
than the Caucasian family; a supply of beard 
and whiskers ; limbs long and slender ; the heel 
straight ; the stature about the same as that of an 
average European. In the southwest of the con- 
tinent, they are meagre, and have the appearance 
of starvelings ; to the north and east, their physique 
is more robust. The painting of the body with 
black, yellow and white is universal, white being 
the color of mourning ; while the removal of one 
or more of the teeth, though sound, and the am- 
putation of finger-joints, are common. Dampier, 
an enterprising navigator and buccaneer, and the 
first to give (1688-1699) any valuable informa- 
tion in regard to Australia, says : " The inhabitants 
of this country are the miserablest people in the 
world." Captain Cook describes them as not liv- 
ing " in societies, but like other animals, . . . hav- 
ing the worst features and most unpleasant looks 
of any people I ever saw." 

The Australians have, for the most part, no 
fixed habitations, their houses, if we may call them 
such, being only temporary coverings of bark or 
leaves, requiring but an hour for construction. 
When the night is cold, they make good their 
total want of clothing by burying themselves in 



lect.xiO ABORIGINES. 423 

the sand. They never cultivate the soil; as a 
general thing, are unacquainted with boats of any 
description; they use hatchets of stone, and jave- 
lins tipped with bone ; and their ornaments, im- 
plements and weapons can all be carried in the 
family store-bag. The bow and arrow are un- 
known to them, their few weapons being project- 
iles. They employ the wimmera, or thro wing-stick, 
a contrivance for accelerating the motion of a 
lance ; also the boomerang, which is wielded with 
great skill. 1 The Australian shows agility as well 
as dexterity. Depending upon the chase and upon 
fishes, 2 wild honey, lizards, reptiles, caterpillars, 
worms and roots for food, their condition is as low 
as can well be conceived, even below that of the 
South-African Bushmen. 3 Children, when trouble- 
some, are killed. Woman is regarded as an arti- 
cle of property; is treated with the greatest indig- 
nity and cruelty. In no other part of the world is 

1 Wilkinson states that "a representation of this instrument 
has been found in the tombs of Thebes, in Upper Egypt. It is 
likewise distinctly delineated in one of the fresco paintings illus- 
trating the manners and customs of the early Egyptians, now in 
the British Museum, where a figure is represented in the act of 
flinging the boomerang, or '■ throw-stick/ at a number of ducks 
as they are escaping from a tuft of papyrus." Bennet : Gather- 
ings of a Naturalist in Australia, 289. 

2 They have no fish-hooks of their own making. 

3 Les plus bruits des hommes, les derniers sortis desmains de la na- 
ture; sans religion, sans lois, sans arts, vivans miser ablement par 
couples totalement etrangers a Veta'c social, les Australasiens n y ont pas 
la moindre idee de leur nudite. M. Bory de St. Vincent. 



424 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect.xi. 

her condition worse. Wife-stealing prevails; po- 
lygamy and infanticide exist. 1 Rev. George Tap- 
lin says: "The natives told me that, some twenty 
years before I came to Point Macleay, they first 
saw white men on horseback, and thought the 
horses were their visitors' mothers, because they 
carried them on their backs! I have also heard 
that another tribe regarded the first pack-bullocks 
they saw as the white fellows' wives, because they 
carried the luggage." 2 That the son-in-law should 
never mention the name of his mother-in-law, nor 
the daughter-in-law the name of her-father-in-law, 
is a singular yet imperative custom. 

The language of Australia, which is broken into 
many dialects, possesses also certain characteristics 
common, so far as known, throughout the conti- 
nent. It has a predominance of nasal sounds, and 
an absence of sibilant sounds ; each word begin- 
ning with a consonant, and ending with a vowel or 
semivowel. It is aggregative. No prefixes are 
used, but only suffixes, and these to an almost in- 
definite extent. There is a dual as well as plural. 
In declension, the language is nearly twice as rich 
as the Latin, and has various conjugations, reflec- 

1 " Le rite de la circoncision decouvret aux iles Fidji, Tonga et Ta- 
hiti, la perforation de Voreille -pour y passer un os, /'anthropophagie, 
Vinfanticide pratique de preference chez les Jilles, appartiennent aux 
deux peuples. f> Topinard : Les Races Indigenes de I'Australie, 113, 
114. 

2 The Narrinyeri, 68. 



eject. xi;] THEIR LANGUAGES. 425 

tive, reciprocal, determinative, continuative, with 
moods and tenses not less full than the Greek. 
Indeed, it is prolific in forms, and capable of indi- 
cating numerous gradations and even precision of 
thought. While the Polynesian tongues are sim- 
ple in their structure, this is complex ; it lacks, 
however, the substantive verb as well as auxil- 
iaries. Like Indian tribes of America, the people 
have but slight power of computation or of gen- 
eralization, and hence employ no generic term for 
tree, bird or fish, and the like. Invention seems 
utterly to have died out; they can imitate, but 
have no power to originate, or to improve upon, any- 
thing once taught them. In social intercourse, 
there prevails a linguistic formality beyond that 
of almost any other people. Each family adopts 
some animal or plant as a badge, and, in tattooing, 
this tribal symbol is employed, which answers to 
the totem of North-American Indians. As in 
South Africa, rude outlines of men and animals, 
painted or etched, are found on rocks here and 
there. Of rulers they have none, but only lead- 
ers. Indeed, no word denoting "a chief,*' or "to 
command," is known among them. 

Intensely superstitious, they believe in sorcery; 
and men become professional magicians by possess- 
ing the wise man's or " philosopher's stone," so 
much sought for in Europe during the Middle 
Ages. Shining, transparent specimens are deemed 
sacred, and avail as amulets, but may be touched 



426 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

or seen by the conjurer alone. Only the most 
dim and inadequate religious notions prevail. 
They hold to a dualism of superior powers, one 
good, one bad, each with countless subordinate 
divinities. Fear is the universal sentiment; the 
love of God to man, or of man to God, being for- 
eign to their conceptions. Belief in the immortal- 
ity of the soul is very general, and the notion is 
entertained that disembodied souls become white, 
and may reappear ; that the soul separate from the 
bod}^ is very minute, and can pass through a 
needle's eye. When any one dies, they studiously 
avoid mentioning his name; but, if obliged to do 
so, they speak in a whisper so low and faint that, 
as they imagine, the spirit cannot hear their voice. 
No priesthood exists ; the} r have no temples, and 
offer no sacrifice or prayers. 

Intellectually, the Australians are inferior to 
the Polynesians, the Papuans of New Guinea and 
the Negroes of Africa. Of all the human family, 
they must be placed in the lowest grade of the 
social scale. There are writers who maintain that 
these native tribes, like the Eskimos, Negroes, 
Hottentots and Bushmen, should not be deemed 
human beings in the full sense of that term ; that 
they are half brutes ; that there is an organic dif- 
ference between them and the superior races; that 
thej^ are not so endowed mentally and morally as 
to be capable of rising to a level with the Mediter- 
ranean nations of Europe; that servitude is their 



lect.xi.t MORAVIAN BEGINNINGS. 427 

natural lot, if extinction be not their fate ; hence 
that it is absurd to attempt their emancipation 
from abasement ; that kidnapping is legitimate, 
and that to destroy them is not homicide. In ac- 
cordance with that sentiment, Australian aborigi- 
nes have sometimes been shot by European colo- 
nists, it is affirmed, as food for dogs. 

No denomination in Christendom is farther re- 
moved from sympathy with such unscriptural sen- 
timents than the United Brethren. In 1850, the 
Governor of Port Phillip was Joseph Latrobe, 
a brother of the Moravian agent in London, and 
an obvious link thus existed between the little 
missionary community of Herrnhut in Germany 
and the natives of Victoria. Early in the year 
just named, two of the Brethren arrived at Mel- 
bourne, and proceeded thence northward to Lake 
Boga, in the region of the Murray River, two hun- 
dred miles northwest of Melbourne. A year later, 
the Government made them a grant of land ; but, 
from the first, disheartening embarrassments were 
encountered. That was nearly coincident with 
the discover}' of Australian gold mines, which un- 
fortunately were not far off; and the same twelve- 
month witnessed the arrival of one hundred and 
fifty-two ships, with twelve thousand passengers, 
at Port Phillip. 1 The year following (1852) there 

1 One fleet of forty-five merchantmen, which sailed from 
English ports during one fortnight in 1852, had on board not 
less than fifty thousand passengers bound for Australia. 



428 MOKAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. xi. 

were a hundred thousand persons at the gold-dig- 
gings, In passing the mission station, which lay 
between the Murray River and the gold-districts 
at Mount Alexander, the miners, some of them 
thoroughly unscrupulous, seemed bent on mis- 
chief. Station-fences were repeatedly destroyed, 
and no redress could be obtained from the mao*is- 
trates. The presence of religious men stood in 
the way of all the selfish and base purposes of 
such adventurers, who took pains to alienate 
the natives from the missionaries ; and their 
Satanic devices were only too successful. A few 
English gentlemen formed noble exceptions. For 
the Brethren to acquire the vernacular language 
was a slow process-; still slower to acquire any 
controlling influence over the minds of natives, 
who are singularly unimpressible by divine truth ; 
who had no longing for the bread of Heaven, 
but only for tobacco. " Give us tobacco," said 
they, " and you are good fellows ! ,! There is no 
word for thanks in their language, and no feeling 
in their hearts that requires such a term. Their 
ingratitude, stolidity and threats of cannibalism 
might be put up with ; but from white Europeans 
the missionaries had a severer trial. One of the 
latter at length laid claim to the very land which 
had been ceded by Government; and the dis- 
heartened Brethren, after five years, returned to 
Germany (1856). The Board of Directors at 
Herrnhut were not pleased with this abandon- 



lect.xi.] EBENEZER, AND RAMAHYUCK. 429 

ment of the field, and resolved upon a renewal 
of the attempt, which was carried into effect in 
1859. To the new station in Wimraera District, 
two hundred miles to the north of Melbourne, 
the name of Ebenezer was given. 1 In spite of 
the stupidity, the debased and filthy habits, the 
roving disposition, of these wretched aborigines, 
Ebenezer has now assumed the appearance of 
a neat, well-ordered Christian village, numbering 
perhaps one hundred and fifty souls. Among 
these is a small church of Christ, and there are 
several families constituted with due religious 
rites, in which domestic happiness and an aspect 
of civilization may be found. After two years, 
another station was begun at Ramahyuck, 2 over 
a hundred miles to the east of Melbourne, in 
Gippsland, a tract lying between Melbourne and 
New South Wales, and with equally encouraging 
results as at the other, although the hamlet is 
smaller than Ebenezer. A great change has 
come about. It had been the custom of the 
natives to burn the spears and clubs of a person 
at his burial : those who are Christianized now 
do this in their lifetime. Instead of the per- 
petual quarrels formerly existing, there are com- 
parative harmony and good-will. Females are 
treated with kindness, though — owing no doubt 

1 The two men who went out at that time were Messrs. 
Spieseke and Hagenaur. 

2 Ramahyuck — Rama, "our home." 



430 MORAVIAN" MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

to the peculiar enticements which surround them, 
and contrary to what is found in most other lands, 
civilized and savage — women in Australia are 
less accessible to divine truth than the men. 

But has vital Christianity obtained undoubted 
lodgment? Does it appear that, among such 
dregs of the human race, a people at the farthest 
conceivable remove from Eden and from Aryan 
capabilities and culture, our religion will find any- 
thing to work upon — anything that can serve as 
a fulcrum for lifting so low a stratum into the 
light of day, and on to the general plane of the 
kingdom of Heaven ? It should be kept in mind 
that the surroundings of this people are also 
peculiarly unfavorable. At the close of our War 
of the Revolution, English prisons were crowded 
to overflow; and in that circumstance Australian 
colonization had its origin. The first contribu- 
tion which Great Britain made to this degenerate 
region of the antipodes consisted of her surplus 
felony. Shipload after shipload, till the number 
transported counted up to thousands upon thou- 
sands of the worst men and women which the 
United Kingdom could supply, were discharged 
upon the southeastern rim of the unfortunate 
continent. Not the horrors of the slave-trade in 
Western Africa, but the vices and outrages of 
demoralized civilization, were the earliest com- 
modity sent to this ample penitentiary. Over 
half a century goes by, and the gold discovery 



lect.xi.] SPECIAL HINDRANCES. 431 

draws a crowd from many lands, not a few of 
whom, unprincipled at the outset, become case- 
hardened in feeling and in conscience. Gold- 
digging never refines any man. Gold built Mel- 
bourne ; gold built Adelaide ; gold is the basis 
of all material growth in Australia. True, among 
voluntary immigrants, a large, most respectable 
and controlling element is now to be found ; but 
for long years it was otherwise. Governor Mac- 
q uarie once said : " There are but two classes of 
persons in New South Wales — those who have 
been convicted, and those who ought to be." 
We are told of one Englishman who made a 
savage woman carry her husband's head round 
her neck as an ornament, he having first divert- 
ed himself by the murder. Another amusement 
of the civilized colonists, we are informed, was 
catching a savage, and tying him to a tree as a 
target to fire at. And such, it has been alleged, 
were not isolated crimes, but specimen facts. 1 
No right of soil appears at any time to have 
been conceded to the aborigines. Under the pres- 
ent condition of things, though greatly improved, 
each European applicant may choose a certain 
number of acres, and, on payment of perhaps half 
the price, may enter into possession. The w T ide 
range, such as any people that subsists hy hunt- 
ing require, is more and more narrowed; the 

1 Napier : Colonization in Southern Africa, 95. 



432 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

game on which they largely relied for subsistence 
vanishes ; and native tribes, who have always 
lived in mutual hostility, dare not migrate ; they 
can only linger around their old haunts and per- 
ish. Ardent spirits have been freely introduced, 
and, as is the case everywhere among savage 
tribes, have proved terribly destructive. Disease, 
starvation or violence do their work. One clan, 
numbering three hundred souls, was, in the course 
of only three years, reduced to four persons. 

With such surroundings and with such results, 
what impressions regarding a people called Chris- 
tian must be made on the native mind — what but 
distrust and dread ? How incredulous and indis- 
posed must they be concerning all efforts to im- 
prove their welfare, temporal or spiritual ! When 
Mr. Hagenaur, a Moravian missionary, traveling 
with a young native (1862), told him that his 
countrymen on the Wimmera had improved a 
good deal since the establishment of the mission 
there, he expressed a wish that the missionary 
would come and teach the people in Gippslancl. 
"I hope to do so," was the reply. "But are 
you telling lies?" said the young man. "Why?" 
asked the missionary. "Because," said the native, 
" the whites always tell lies, and the blacks can 
not believe them." Under the combined obstacles 
of native character and the influence of immi- 
grants, would it be strange if not one conversion 
had been effected? 



lect. xi.] OTHER MISSIONS. 43 







The Propaganda sent out to the west coast 
(1845-6), with Bishop Brady as leader, a party 
of Benedictine missionaries, consisting of seven 
priests, a sub-deacon, a French novice, an Italian, 
eight catechists, two laymen, and seven Irish 
Sisters of Mercy ; but the undertaking, which 
was attended by a sufficient flourish of trumpets, 
proved a failure, except one small station, New 
Norica, to the north of Perth, in the interior, 
where Salvado, afterwards bishop, maintained a 
more permanent foothold. 1 The next year, others 
landed on the northern coast of the continent, 
at Point Essington ; but they met with no suc- 
cess. The excellent senior chaplain in New South 
Wales, the Rev. Samuel Marsden, the "Apostle 
of Australia," a name much revered among the 
Australian islands (1793-1839), interested him- 
self in the native population, and seconded efforts 
made by the Church Missionary Society, 2 which 
sent out Messrs. Watson and Hand (1832) to 
Wellington Valley, two hundred and fifty miles 
northwest of Sydney. A Colonial Government 
pledge of two thousand five hundred dollars per 
annum in aid of the mission was fulfilled till 1857. 
But the pernicious influence of the convict popu- 
lation on the outskirts of the colony was suffi- 

1 Rudesindo Salvador Memorie Storiche delV Australia. Roma, 
1851. 

2 J. B. Marsden: Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Marsden. Lon- 
don, Religious Tract Society. 

28 



434 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. xi. 

cient to thwart all effort in behalf of the natives. 
The English Wesleyan Missionary Society sent 
out a Christian laborer to the neighborhood of 
Sydney (1821), and Governor Bisbane ceded to 
the mission twenty thousand acres of land. The 
results, however, were small — indeed, next to 
nothing. Four years later (1825), Mr. Threlkeld, 
of the London Missionary Society, established 
himself among aborigines in the neighborhood of 
Moreton Bay, five hundred miles north of Sydney, 
and the Government made a grant of ten thou- 
sand acres of land in furtherance of the object. 
Both these societies, the Wesleyan and the Lon- 
don, relinquished their Australian fields in 1829; 
they were expensive and unproductive ; but Mr. 
Threlkeld finished his translation of Luke's Gospel 
into the language of natives near Lake Macquarie, 
two years later (1831), and the same was printed 
by the New South Wales Auxiliary Bible Society. 1 
Under a missionary society which had been formed 
at Sj^dnej^, Messrs. Schmidt and Cuper founded a 
station (1838) called Zion's Hill, near Moreton 
Bay ; and, about the same time, the Lutheran So- 
ciety also (then at Dresden, now at Leipzig) sent 
laborers, Tischelmann and Schiirmann, who began 
operations at Adelaide, the capital of South Aus- 
tralia, and afterwards at Encounter Bay, sixty 



1 He also translated a number of hymns, besides preparing a 
grammar of the vernacular. 



lect.xi.] OTHER MISSIONS. 435 

miles east of Adelaide, as well as at Port Lincoln. 
Land, dwellings, schoolhouses, were provided ; 
nothing was wanting but natives; and the mis- 
sionaries became pastors of German congrega- 
tions. 1 Messrs. Tuckfield and Hurst commenced 
(1839) occupying a tract of land granted by Gov- 
ernment thirty miles from Geelong; yet little im- 
pression was made on the native mind; roving 
habits and tribal wars were here, as everywhere, 
in the way. After a decade of labor nearly fruit- 
less, they removed (1848) to a point on Murray 
River. The year 1840 witnessed two movements 
in behalf of aboriginal Australians — one by the 
Gossner Missionary Society of Berlin, and the 
other by English Wesleyans, who established one 
station at Geelong, near Point Phillip, in South 
Australia; afterwards one also at Bentingdale, 
a hundred miles west of Melbourne, and another 
at Perth, on the west coast. The Gospel Propaga- 
tion Society moved toward the opening of a mis- 
sion at Somerset Colony, in Queensland (1867) ; 
but, natives and colonists opposing, it continued 
only a year. An institution for the children of 
the natives, started at Albany, on King George's 
Sound, bj r Mrs. Camfield, wife of the English mag- 
istrate, 2 was removed by the Bishop of Perth to 

1 Lutherans from Silesia, who could not accept the religious 
ordinances of Frederick William III, emigrated to South Aus- 
tralia. This led to an attempt in behalf of the natives. 

2 Mrs. Edward Millett : Australian Parsonage, 130-133 



436 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

his residence in 1871. Reference might be made 
to the station started by the Anglican Colonial 
Church (1774) at Carmel, on Lake Tyers, twenty-, 
five miles from Ramahyuck; to labors by the 
Wesleyans and the Gospel Propagation Society in 
behalf of the numerous Chinese, who have been 
attracted to the gold-diggings ; to the Bookooyana 
Mission, begun at Point Pearce, on the west 
coast of York Peninsula, and supported by the 
" Aborigines' Friends Association," under the 
superintendence of the Rev. Mr. Kiihn, who is a 
Moravian ; and to the Hermannsburg experiment 
in the interior, which had to be relinquished 
(1873). The United Brethren were also led to 
undertake labor at Cooper's Creek, seven hundred 
miles from Adelaide, requiring one hundred and 
four days of indescribable hardships to reach. 
Their wagons would sink in mud or sand ; water 
was not to be found ; the heat proved intolerable ; 
sand-storms were blinding, and inflammation of 
the eyes inevitable. The enterprise was entirely 
impracticable. 1 

Great disappointment has attended most of the 
attempts made for evangelizing native Austra- 
lians. Those experiments have been made under 
an ample variety of auspices and methods, but 
they have encountered difficulties quite unusual. 
The sad peculiarity, as we have seen, of all earlier 

1 The attempt at Kopperamana was given up in 1860. 



lect.xi.] FAILURES UNAVOIDABLE. 437 

attempts, was that they had to be made in the 
presence of exiled convicts, then amidst the cy- 
clone of gold-hunting, but always and everywhere 
in behalf of a people reserved for the ultimate test 
of Christian faith and patience. Of all human 
beings, that people seem to have the least curios- 
ity, the smallest desire for improvement in any re- 
spect, and to be the least open to laudable incite- 
ment from contact with a superior race. Gather 
them into a school, and the lesson of yesterday is 
entirely forgotten today. " Of what use is it," 
they say, "that our children go to your schools? 
What that is useful do they learn there ? If you 
draw ours into your schools, we will draw yours 
into the woods, and teach them something of 
real use — to fish, to hunt, to make weapons and 
nets." They pick up English with no great 
effort; but what use do they make of the lan- 
guage? Chiefly to beg for brandy and tobacco, 
and to grow voluble in cursing and swearing — 
an accomplishment of which the vernacular does 
not admit. They show rare aptitude for all the 
vices which Europeans and outside Asiatics bring, 
and which require no organized boards or help- 
ing hands at home. 

Since the time when (April 19, 1770), from 
the mast-top of Captain Cook's ship Resolution, 
the cry of "Land!" was heard, it has seemed as 
if more of misery and detriment than of good 
has been brought to the aborigines. Who, we 



438 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

ask again, who were the first messengers sent 
from England ? Not messengers of mercy, but 
jail-birds, missionaries of the pit ; and the prevail- 
ing result of British occupation has been moral 
and social devastation. As it is written, "How 
portentous are the feet of them that preach the 
gospel of destruction, and bring sad tidings of 
bad things ! " The European bush-rangers of Aus- 
tralia have been pronounced by English writers 
themselves to be a race of wretches wholly un- 
surpassed in violence and treachery. Their pesti- 
lential profligacy was like a sirocco from "the lake 
that burneth with fire and brimstone." Govern- 
ment policy and administration, especially in 
former days, proceeded upon an arbitrary assump- 
tion of rights, and were sometimes thoroughly un- 
christian. The Parliamentary Inquiry of 1836, 
elicited by Sir William Molesworth, drew such 
a picture of colonial infamy as must have aston- 
ished the most apathetic ; and the Report of 1837 
only confirms the horrible truth of statements 
then made. 1 Spanish occupancy of the West 

1 William Howitt : Colonization of Christianity, 471. 

"Mr. Bannister, late attorney-general for that colony, says, 
in his recent work, British Colonization and the Colored Tribes: 
1 In regard to New South Wales, some disclosures were made by 
the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, Mr. Coates, 
and by others, that are likely to do good in the pending inquir- 
ies concerning transportation ; and, if that punishment is to be 
continued, it would be merciful to destroy ail the natives by 
military massacre, as a judge of the colony once coolly pro- 



lect.xio DECAY OF ABORIGINES. 439 

Indies was hardly more fatal to the aborigines. 
The Adelaide tribe is already extinct, and so 
are the Burra, the Rufus and others. In none 
of their former haunts can a single trace of them 
be found. Their language is extinct. So com- 
plete is the annihilation that only with the great- 
est difficulty could Mr. Waterhouse, the curator 
of the museum, collect a set of their weapons 
for the Paris Exhibition (1878). x Less than two 
hundred thousand of the aboriginal people, all 
told, remain on the continent — fewer by one third 
than the Indian tribes of the United States. In 
Tasmania, the large outlying island, the last na- 
tive has died. 2 It required only sixty-six j^ears 
from the beginning of occupancy here by the 
English in 1803 to exterminate the entire popula- 
tion (1869). 

Of late years, legislation has been more hu- 
mane; the tone of colonial sentiment has risen; 
philanthropic associations and endeavors have a 



posed for a particular district, rather than let them be exposed 
to the lingering death they now undergo. But half the truth 
was not told as to New South Wales. Military massacres have 
probably been more common there than elsewhere; in 1826, 
Governor Darling ordered such massacres ; and in consequence 
one black native, at least, was shot at the stake in cool blood. 
The attorney-general remonstrated against illegal orders of this 
kind, and was told that the Secretary of State's instructions 
authorized them/" Ibid, 471, 472. 

1 Native Tribes of South Australia, Introduction, ix. 

2 Bon wick : The Last of the Tasmanians. 



440 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Clect xi. 

larger place ; and, though success in evangelis- 
tic lines has not been great, success has been 
achieved, and that, too, in greater measure than 
mere philanthropy has effected temporal im- 
provement. The South-Australian Presbyterian 
Church, seconded by the Free Church of Scot- 
land, has conducted a prosperous work at Point 
Macleay, under the superintendence of the Rev. 
Mr. Taplin ; and, since its commencement (1859), 
between fifty and a hundred natives have become 
church-members. Rather unreasonable in their 
requests they may be ; their frequent wayward- 
ness may be a trial ; yet says the missionary, 
"I know that in these homes the voice of family 
devotion is heard, morning and evening, led by 
the head of each family. This has come about 
by Christian influence, not by any positive com- 
mand on my part. On the Lord's Day, instead 
of a wild and oddly dressed throng of savages, 
our chapel presents the appearance of a decently- 
dressed congregation of worshipers." * 

Yes, these aborigines, so low down in the scale 
of humanity, will be represented in the general 
assembly of the redeemed. The first Australian 
black received into the Christian Church by bap- 

1 The Narrinyeri, 118. 

" When I got clown there, I stood a moment and listened to 
the sounds around me. Nobody knew I was there. From the 
young men's sleeping-rooms came the sound of voices singing 
devoutly Lyte's beautiful hymn, ' Abide with me ! fast falls the 
eventide/" Ibid, 117. 



lect.xi.1 CHRISTIANIZATION EFFECTED. 441 

tism was a youth on whom the Rev. Mr. Chase 
of Melbourne took pity, when he was found wan- 
dering, hungry and naked, in the streets of that 
city. Becoming warmly attached to the family 
of that most excellent man, he accompanied him 
to England, and, during the voyage, showed the 
first signs of a change of heart, which continued 
in so satisfactory a manner that he could, before 
long, be baptized. He came from the Wimmera 
District — his mother had been shot in cold blood 
by a white man — and he had made his way to Mel- 
bourne. His desire to tell his countrymen of 
Jesus was great; and his kind friend, Mr. Chase, 
would gladly have provided him with an educa- 
tion for that purpose. The unwonted climate, 
however, told with fatal effect on the youth's 
constitution ; William Wirnmera died, trusting in 
Jesus, and his remains lie in a churchyard at 
Reading. 1 His case reminds us of Karpik, the 
earliest Labrador Eskimo who was baptized, and 
who died in England. 

At neither of the localities occupied by United 
Brethren is there a large number of stationary 
natives — indeed, only a handful; 2 but, among 
them, there have been and are those unquestion- 
ably to be accounted disciples of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. The first-fruits of a Moravian harvest 



1 Periodical Accounts, XXX, 211. 

2 Not over one hundred and iifty at the two. 



442 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

small as yet was a degraded black man, who 
received (1860) the baptismal name of Nathaniel. 
He had been one of the worst savages, but he 
could now accept reproof with an humble spirit ; 
his addresses and prayers were marked by unc- 
tion ; in his illness he looked forward with joyful 
anticipation to being soon with Jesus, and often 
exclaimed : " Oh for more of love to Him who 
is so full of love to me ! " and at the last, point- 
ing upward, he said, "I see Jesus!" (1877). A 
brother of his began evidently to be taught of 
God (1863): "What you tell me," he testifies, 
" pleases me better from day to day ; I like 
to feel that Jesus becomes more precious to me. 
I know I am a sinner; yes, I hate myself and 
my sin, but I hope that I shall obtain pardon 
and peace." At Ebenezer was also one Dicka- 
dick, who gave pleasing evidence of being a 
renewed and pardoned man. Amidst the severe 
and protracted sufferings of his last sickness, 
" Oh, my dear teachers," he often exclaimed, 
" I thank you for showing me the way to Christ. 
The Lord bless you and your labors among n^ 
poor fellow-countrymen ! And may He also pre- 
serve y our wives and children ! And my Sav- 
iour, how gracious he is ! To him be thanks and 
praise ! " Then, turning to his wife, he said : 
" Amelia, do not run into destruction ! Remain 
here and follow Jesus; then w r e shall meet again." 
Once he said: "Here I lie and wait for my 



lect.xi.] CHEISTIAKIZATION EFFECTED. 443 

Saviour to come and take nie. What I now 
suffer is, I am quite sure, for my good as regards 
eternity. Jesus suffered much more." 1 Mention 
might be made of a little girl, seven years of 
age, who fell asleep in Jesus, and who, to the 
great comfort of her parents, said, a few moments 
before her end: "Papa, I shall leave you; I go 
to Jesus ! " and, with a beseeching look, added, 
" Please, papa, follow Jesus ! " 2 Such dying testi- 
mony will be deemed the more noteworthy when 
it is remembered how Australians, in their hea- 
then state, cling to life, wretched though it be. 
Suicide is unknown among them. One of the 
most pleasing evidences that Christianity has 
made an effective lodgment in any heart, savage 
or civilized, is a desire to communicate the good 
news of the great salvation, and that token of 
a genuine work has not been wholly wanting in 
converted Australians. "If you wish to catch 
wild elephants," it is said, "you must send tame 
ones among the wild troop ; " and there are cases 
of native Christians acting upon that adage, and 
showing a wish savingly to benefit instead of 
fighting their neighbors. 

What, now, has brought this about? Christian 
labor. Take out that distinctive element, and 
you withdraw all the real power. Experiments 



1 Periodical Accounts, XXVIII, 45. 

2 Ibid, XXX, 379. 



444 MOE AVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

of a different kind have been tried. Great pains 
were formerly bestowed to civilize the natives 
of Sydney; 1 gardens were given to them, and 
various attempts made to induce habits of order, 
and an acquaintance with European arts; but 
no benefxt resulted, and the colonists there — 
kindly disposed, but not wise in their methods 
— came to think that nothing could prevent 
native deterioration. They did not clearly appre- 
hend the fact that, among such a people, improve- 
ment will take its rise in the conscience alone, 
from a man's most interior self, and proceed 
thence outward; that external and secular mould- 
ing does not reach the real man, does not neces- 
sarily make him any better, nor awaken effective 
desires for elevation. It is in vain to anticipate 
fruit before there is a root. So long ago as 1814, 
an institution for such native children as could 
be gathered was established at Paramatta by the 
Governor of New South Wales ; and once a year 
neighboring tribes were assembled near Sydney, 
were feasted on beef and potatoes, and dismissed 
again to the wilderness with presents of blankets 
and tobacco ; but nothing to speak of in the way 
even of civilization was thus effected. More was 
learned of the vices of convicts and immigrants 
than anything else. In the course of a score of 
years (1821-1842), within the Colony of New 

1 Stokes : Discoveries in Australia, I, 252. 



lect.xio CIVILIZATION INADEQUATE. 445 

South Wales alone, four hundred thousand, dol- 
lars were expended upon governmental efforts to 
ameliorate the condition of the natives ; but the 
experiment was a complete failure. The few abo- 
rigines remaining there are no better morally than 
their forefathers were, nor more advanced on the 
road to civilization. 1 

Turn now to the inexpensive Moravian opera- 
tion at Itaniahyuck. The land is poor; yet the 
natives have, with great pains, been trained to in- 
dustrious efforts. Hops and arrowroot are culti- 
vated ; for the latter, not only was a prize secured 
at the Melbourne Exhibition, but samples sent to 
the Vienna Exhibition won the prize medal there, 
too. The school was placed (1874) by the Gov- 
ernment Inspector highest on the list of rudiment- 
ary schools in the Province of Victoria. In 1876, 
the missionary in charge was able to inform the 
Aboriginal Board that no more clothes, blankets 
and the like, which are distributed among the na- 
tives, would be required at that station. Their 
health has improved; life is prolonged. Even a 
surplus of cattle are raised. A royal commission, 
with Sir William Stowell as chairman, appointed 
not long ago to inquire into the management 
of all stations and into the present condition of 
the aborigines, reported relative to this Mora- 
vian establishment thus : " Everything in and 

1 Native Tribes of South Australia, Introduction, ix. 



446 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

about Ramahyuck Mission Station was found in 
faultless order. The children were cleanly and 
well-clad, and many of them educated up to a 
standard that would compare very favorably with 
the schools frequented by white children. The 
adults were also found to have acquired indus- 
trious and well-regulated habits. Not only are 
the blacks on this station well cared for, and ably 
instructed in all those arts that pertain to indus- 
trious and rural life, but they are taught to be 
contented and happy. They cultivate arrowroot, 
and raise all the necessaries of life on the station. 
The children save their small change in money- 
boxes, and the adults store up their earnings until 
they can be invested in some way that will yield 
a satisfactory return." * Yes, and, to show their 
thankfulness for the blessings of the gospel which 
was first preached in Judea, they not long ago 
remembered the Leper Hospital of the United 
Brethren's church at Jerusalem, and out of their 
poverty contributed towards its support. The 
collection for that object amounted to more than 
twenty-five dollars. The gift came from not more 
than twenty to thirty persons, members of one of 
the most degraded tribes on the face of the earth ; 
but their hearts were touched with love to the 
Lord and his work. 

Formerly all they had in the way of a habita- 

1 Periodical Accounts, XXX, 377. 



lect.xi.] CIVILIZATION INADEQUATE. 447 

tion was a slight, rudely-thatched covering, placed 
on four upright poles, between three and four feet 
high, instead of which they have now neat stone 
cottages. Already, in 1879, some of the native 
women had supplied themselves with sewing ma- 
chines, and one family had purchased a har- 
monium. It was Moravian success at Ebenezer 
which attracted the attention of the Christian 
public in Victoria to the aborigines, and showed 
the possibility of their elevation. In 1861, the 
United Presbyterian Church applied for a Mo- 
ravian missionary to labor in their employ. As 
regards capacity for improvement, even Mr. An- 
thony Trollope is compelled to confess : " I heard 
the children examined in the school. 1 About 
thirty, I think, there were, and I was much struck 
by their proficiency. Their writing was peculiarly 
good, as was also their memory. They are a mi- 
metic people, very quick at copying, and gifted 
with strong memories." 2 When his Excellency 
Lord Canterbury visited the same school, he was 
particularly interested in a boy of eight, who had 
been caught less than two j r ears before, at which 
time he knew not a word of English, and had 
never seen a book ; but now could read tolerably 
well, and had made fair progress in all elementary 
branches, writing' included. 3 The most animating 

1 Instruction is wholly in the English language. 

2 Australia and New Zealand, I, 504. 

3 Periodical Accounts, XXVIII, 46. 



448 MOKAVIAST MISSIONS. [lect.xi. 

fact, however, is that recently (1879-1880) the 
number of converts has nearly doubled. The 
Bible may be found in every house, and morning 
and evening worship is maintained. In spite of 
great embarrassments, in the face of no inconsid- 
erable ridicule, contempt and scorn, the Brethren 
have prosecuted this enterprise, and have begun 
to demonstrate the possibilities of Christianizing, 
and so of civilizing, a people morally the feeblest 
and least susceptible to elevating influences of 
any on the face of the earth. Moravian mission- 
aries have successfully conducted the forlorn hope 
of evangelization. 

Indifference, intense worldliness and infidelity 
decry these efforts. "To me," says Mr. Anthony 
Trollope, 1 " the game is not worth the candle ; . . . 
the race is doomed, and is very quickly encoun- 
tering its doom." But what is it that dooms 
the aborigines? European aggression, European 
recklessness, European vice, European rum. The 
savages, naked, stupid, filthy, forlorn, were not, it 
is true, promising subjects for philanthropic labor. 
Their mutual promiscuous slaughters helped to 
keep population down to a low figure ; but exter- 
mination would not have been reached. That 
was reserved for civilized foreigners to effect. 
Their hunting-grounds were seized, their means of 
subsistence cut off, indigenous degradation inten- 

1 Australia and New Zealand. I, 503. 



lect.xi.] NOT DOOMED. 449 

sified by imported vices, and thus their doom 
sealed. It becomes, then, quite a convenient 
and philosophical apology to say that this is a re- 
sult universal and inevitable where a lower type 
comes in contact with a superior one. Did the 
British ancestors of these Australian colonists 
melt away before disciplined Romans? Do na- 
tives die out under Dutch occupancy of Asiatic 
islands? Little as has been effected by mission- 
ary effort in Australia, there is enough to show 
its recuperative power. Christianity knows noth- 
ing of a doom on this earth which persevering 
equity, love and evangelistic fidelity will not 
reverse. Although the total native population 
of Victoria has decreased one half since the es- 
tablishment of Ramahyuck, the number at that 
station has not diminished. The Narrinyeri, for 
instance, show the opposite of decay. Children 
are plenty among them. Christianity, once fully 
adopted, makes them more vigorous and long- 
lived. 1 It has been demonstrated that other 
tribes also are capable of rapid improvement. 
Many have acquired ease and correctness in the 
use of the English language, have become skilled 
riders and superior shepherds, and some have 
been made children of the Most High. While 
the convict immigration and too many of the 
gold-seekers were " filled with all unrighteous- 

1 The Narrinyeri, 9. 
29 



450 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, xi. 

ness," a better day has dawned; for better men 
have come, and a better administration has been 
inaugurated. Lord Stanley, when Secretary of 
State for the Colonies, was most earnest and per- 
sistent in his instructions to the different Aus- 
tralian governors regarding the treatment of abo- 
rigines. 1 

Time was when British convicts ignorantly 
broke up gold-yielding quartz, and paved the 
streets of Bathurst with it; when the farmer, 
unawares, turned up the same mineral with his 
plough and used it for garden-walks ; when an 
Oxford graduate ornamented his walls by build- 
ing into them masses of white quartz variegated 
with the unrecognized yellow metal ; but pre- 
cious stones and human souls are not at such 
discount now. Improved sentiment and Chris- 
tian principle have been gaining ground. That 
room for further improvement exists is evident; 
but shall men bearing the Christian name say that 
they do not account the game worth the candle? 
It does not pay to obey Christ's command in the 
Pacific ! Australian souls not worth saving ! In 
the day of final judgment, let me have the place 
of any despised barbarian of Australia rather 
than that of a baptized litterateur holding such 
sentiments ! 

Australian waters have long been proverbial 

1 Native Tribes of South Australia, Introduction, viii. 



lect.xi.] NOT DOOMED. 451 

for roughness; and no small effort yet remains 
before the desired haven of complete Christian- 
ization will be reached. But to the inquiry, 
" Watchman, what of the night?" mariners, gaz- 
ing at the most beautiful constellation in the 
southern hemisphere, reply: "Midnight is past; 
the cross begins to bend." 



LECTURE XII. 

RfoUM^ AND CHARACTERISTICS. 



RESUME AND CHARACTERISTICS, 



The only field of Moravian labor among the 
heathen which remains to be surveyed is that in 
Central Asia. It was begun at the instance of 
Giitzlaff, the well-known missionary; and, though 
only two men were wanted at first, thirty re- 
sponded to the invitation. The two who were 
selected, Messrs. Pageli and Hyde, lay Brethren, 
hoped to reach the Mongols of Tartary by way 
of Russia ; but, being refused permission to take 
that more direct route, they went (1853) to 
England, thence to India, and onward by Simla 
toward the lofty Himalayan region near the west- 
ern confines of Thibet (1854). In 1855, they 
endeavored to enter Chinese Mongolia; but the 
extreme jealousy of Government made it imprac- 
ticable, as also two later attempts. Accordingly 
they established themselves at Kyelang, in the 
Province of Lahoul (1856) — the mission-house 
being ten thousand feet above the sea — and at 
Poo, in Kunawar (1865). The same year that 
this second station was opened, the first baptisms, 
four in number, took place at the other station. 
Between thirty and forty converts are reckoned 
in later reports. Three missionaries are on the 

(455) 



456 MOEAVIAN MISSIONS. clect. xii. 

ground. One missionary, the Rev. Mr. Jaschke, 
a descendant of the pious George Jaschke men- 
tioned in Lecture I, 1 suffers extremely from 
impaired health, and is at present residing in 
Herrnhut, where he has superintended the print- 
ing of a Thibetan-German lexicon and a Thi- 
betan-English lexicon. Considerable portions of 
Holy Scripture have been translated into Thi- 
betan, also hymns and other contributions of 
Christian literature, as well as school-books ; and 
this indefatigable man is acknowledged to be 
the best Thibetan scholar in Europe. 2 At both 
stations above named, lithographic presses have 
been established, and divine truth is scaling those 
more than Alpine hights of Central Asia. Sel- 
dom, however, have Moravian laborers had a 
severer trial of faith and patience than amidst 
the strongholds of Buddhism. But in that cold 
and dreary "Dwelling of Snow," near the head- 
waters of the Indus, the Sutlej and the Ganges, 
they have kindled a beacon-light ; they are occu- 
pying advanced posts, and preparing a base for 
movements into Thibet proper and into China 
from the west, as well as into Mongolia, when- 
ever Divine Providence shall call. 3 The time for 



1 See page 32 of this work. 

2 " By far the best authority on the language of Thibet." 
Max Miiller. 

3 H. Schneider : Ein Missionsbild aus dem westlichen Hima- 
laya. Gnadan, 1880. 



LECT.xn.i UNSUCCESSFUL MISSIONS. 457 

writing a history of the mission, however, has 
not yet come. 

Nor is it necessary to dwell on the unsuccessful 
missionary attempts of the United Brethren. It 
would be singular if, in the course of a century 
and a half, they should not find themselves con- 
strained, as Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch 
in Pisidia, to retire from certain fields ; and singu- 
lar if they did not find themselves now and then, 
like Paul and Silas, u forbidden of the Holy Ghost 
to preach the Word in Asia." They did retire 
from Persia, after a two years' experiment (1747- 
1748) ; and from Ceylon, after attempts extending 
through twenty-six years (1740-1766), because the 
Dutch clergy and the Colonial Government main- 
tained persistent opposition; from the East Indies, 
after six years (1777-1783), the cost and the mor- 
tality being excessive; and from among the Cal- 
mucks, after a struggle at different times for more 
than half a century (1768-1823). ' A movement 
toward China (1742) and another toward the 
Caucasus (1782) were failures. The experiment 
in Tranquebar (1775-1796) was not a success. 
Africa has also witnessed evangelistic disappoint- 
ments; for example, in Algiers, Ehrenfried Iiich- 
ter, once a wealthy merchant, having been moved, 
although advanced in age, to undertake a work 



1 Alexander Glitsch: Geschichte der Brudergemeine Sarepta im 
ostlichen Russian d. Nisky, 1865. 



458 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

in behalf of Christian slaves, after five months of 
earnest and successful endeavors, fell a victim to 
the plague (1741). There was failure, too, in 
Guinea (1737-1771). During the renewed efforts 
of three years' continuance (1767-1771), the nine 
missionaries who went out all died, and hence 
Western Africa was relinquished. In Egypt, 
three attempts proved abortive (1752-1783) ; mis- 
sionaries were unable to reach Abyssinia, their ob- 
jective point; the Copts, among whom something 
was attempted, were quite indisposed to receive 
the truth; and political disturbances rendered 
an abandonment of that field necessary. 1 While 
Greenland and Labrador furnish monuments of 
success, other northern enterprises have been 
baffled, as one in Lapland (1734-1735), because 
the Swedish Laplanders were found to be under 
the care of the Lutheran State Church; and 
one among the Samoyedes, on the shores of the 
Arctic Ocean (1737-1738), where the missionaries 
were arrested, charged with being Swedish spies, 
thrown into prison, and finally sent back to Ger- 
many. The mission in Demarara, British Guiana 
(1835-1840), was spoken of in Lecture IV* 

Here and there about the world, there have 
been numerous instances of Christian labor per- 
formed by individual Moravians, sometimes under 
the immediate direction of the Unitas Fratrum, 

1 Narrative of the Life of John Henry Danhe. London, 1830. 



lect.xii.] THE DIASPORA. 459 

and sometimes otherwise. Thus, in Florida, a gen- 
tleman supported a missionary who was detailed 
for the purpose of laboring among the slaves on 
his estates. Five minutes out from the Jaffa 
gate of Jerusalem is a lazar-house, founded by 
the Baroness of Keffenbinck Ascheraden, which 
was from the first (1867) in charge of the Rev. 
Mr. and Mrs. Tappe, formerly in Labrador, but 
has now been placed in the hands of the Mora- 
vian church, and to some of the wretched in- 
mates this leper-home has proved the vestibule 
of heaven. There are also various forms of home 
work, such as Young Men's Associations, Ragged 
Schools, Evening Classes and Sunday Schools, 
carried on by the German congregations. In the 
British and American provinces, there is no small 
amount of home-missionary labor. 

If it were proposed to take a comprehensive 
view of Moravian evangelistic work, it would be 
necessary to notice the Diaspora, 1 a mission of 
the United Brethren among the State churches 
of Continental Europe. It takes its name from a 
Greek term, signifying the Dispersion, in the first 
verse of Peter's First Epistle. It is carried on 
independently by the German province. This en- 
terprise belongs to the department of domestic 
missions, its object being, not to withdraw mem- 
bers from existing churches, but to foster spirit- 

x Ueberblick iiber den Gang des Diasporawerkes. 1877. 



460 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

ual life by the formation of societies for prayer, 
Scripture readings, and for edification in general. 
Missionaries itinerate through Protestant Ger- 
many, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, 
and Poland ; through Livonia, Esthronia, and cer- 
tain other parts of Russia; visiting from house to 
house, and holding religious services in chapels 
or prayer-halls, but not administering the sacra- 
ments. There are about sixty central stations. 
This form of unsectarian effort is not of recent 
origin; it dates from 1729, if not even earlier, 
when it was found necessary to establish a travel- 
ing ministry, in order to meet the wishes of those 
persons, widely dispersed, who desired to have 
fellowship with the Brethren. Whenever Conti- 
nental state churches shall be disestablished, an 
evangelical element now gathered into societies 
will doubtless, to a very great extent, become 
formally connected with the Unitas Fratrum, as 
has already been witnessed in the formation of 
Swiss Moravian churches since the new ecclesias- 
tical regime of 1873. The present number of ad- 
herents is estimated at seventy or more thousand. 
It is quite possible that there may yet be a fulfill- 
ment of the striking declaration of Schaffer in a 
sermon at Berthelsdorf, one hundred and sixty 
years ago : x " God intends to kindle a light on 
these hills which is to illumine the whole country. 
Of this I am fully and firmly persuaded." 

1 At the installation of Rothe, August 30, 1722. 



lect.xiio IN BOHEMIA. 461 

One outgrowth of the Diaspora mission is a 
work since 1879 in Bohemia, which combines, in 
some measure, features and aims of both foreign 
and domestic missions; and special interest at- 
taches to this enterprise from the circumstance 
of its being 3,mong the seats of the Brethren's an- 
cient church. Success is attending the movement. 
Four Moravian churches, with a membership of 
nearly two hundred and fifty, have been gathered. 
Since 1867, there has been an orphanage at Roth- 
wasser, and the memorable prayer of Comenius is 
being answered. 1 The martyrdom of John Huss 
and Jerome of Prague, and the ministry of other 
Bohemian reformers before the Reformation, have 
not yet accomplished their whole work. Historic 
heroism is reasserting its inspiration today. 

The missionary spirit at Herrnhut was de- 
veloped at first more especially among the Scla- 
vonic members, those who had felt the heel of 
Romish oppression; whose relatives were still 
under a galling yoke; who kept in mind ances- 
tral night-worship in the wilderness, precious 
hymns once sung with bated breath, or that rung 
out clearly in the hour of martyrdom — a testi- 
mony to Christ's cross and crown that was cut 
short only by the executioner's axe; and who re- 
membered also rapt supplications of their fore- 
fathers, in the midst of which earth had been left 

1 See page 30 of this work. 



462 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

and heaven entered. German adherents from the 
Pietistic school became assimilated. The season of 
marked spiritual quickening in 1727 fused all the 
elements into rare fraternity, a true Unitas Fra- 
trum, permeated by mutual Christian love and 
love to the Saviour. But, well for them and for the 
world, that revival did not spend itself in the lux- 
uries of personal religious enjoyment. At Halle, 
there was a growing legalistic spirit, repressive and 
restrictive, rather than free and creative ; at Herrn- 
hut there sprang up a strong desire to have others 
share in the refreshment of quickened spiritual 
life. With that as an efficient sentiment, the way 
was prepared in the hearts of the little commu- 
nity for broader sympathies and remoter efforts. 
The Waldensian church is indeed a martyr church, 
yet not till since the Revolutionary period of 1848 
has that brave, suffering people come down from 
its fastnesses among the High Alps, and entered 
upon evangelistic work at various points in united 
and enfranchised Italy. But the renewed Mora- 
vian church has, from its outset, been a mission- 
ary church. Happily, it did not become a state 
church, nor become amalgamated with the Re- 
formed or the Lutheran communion. The origi- 
nal idea of the United Brethren was religious life 
and labor, separate from Protestant churches, not 
by organization, but by sphere and method. On 
becoming leader and presiding genius, Count Zin- 
zendorf aimed to give the community such form 



lect.xii.] EARLY EVANGELISTIC SPIEIT. 463 

and position as would not interfere with state 
churches, and would keep Herrnhut so far out- 
side of those establishments that it should neither 
be absorbed, nor be marred by contact. Imme- 
diate social segregation, and at length ecclesiastical 
consolidation, resulted. From the first, they could 
well have said : 

" We are a garden walled around, 
Chosen and made peculiar ground; 
A little spot enclosed by grace, 
Out of the world's wide wilderness." 

Proselytism has never been chargeable upon 
them; indeed, from their earliest day they have 
professed not to desire great denominational in- 
crease; non-extension was even adopted as a prin- 
ciple. At the same time, the true evangelistic 
idea became scripturally dominant — the purpose 
to give the glorious gospel to the largest possible 
number of those who had never heard it. They 
reduced to practice the truth that no community 
can be so small, and no individual so poor, as not 
to be bound to do something in this line. Only 
ten years after the first tree was felled in the 
wilderness at Herrnhut — the census giving merely 
such a number of souls (600) as may be found in 
a New-England hamlet — they were ready for a 
movement beyond sea. Four months later, they 
started another. Within five years, they began as 
many foreign missions — in 1732, to negroes of St. 



464 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

Thomas ; in 1733, to the Eskimos of Greenland ; 
in 1734, to Indians on our continent ; in 1735, to 
Indians in South America ; in 1736, to Hottentots 
in South Africa ; and, within four and twenty 
years from the time that Dober and Nitschmann 
started for the West Indies, eighteen new mis- 
sions had proceeded from that little village of 
glowing evangelistic zeal. 

Nor did this prove to be a mere effervescence ; 
missionary thought became a large constituent in 
the continued life of the Unity. It grew with 
their growth; it had a conspicuous place in all 
their plans and movements ; it is the staple of their 
literature ; it was prophetically symbolized in that 
ancient Episcopal seal of their church which has 
come down to them from the early Bohemian 
Brethren — on a crimson ground a lamb, bearing 
the resurrection cross, from which hangs a tri- 
umphal banner with the motto : Vicit Agnus nos- 
ter; Eum sequamur ("Our Lamb has conquered ; 
Him let us follow "). That idea has been the very 
soul of their organization, and the secret of their 
prosperity. It occupies much time in delibera- 
tions at their ecclesiastical gatherings; a certain 
number of foreign missionaries have place in the 
General Synod; all their periodicals are largely 
occupied with evangelistic affairs. Herrnhut and 
its affiliated settlements are not so much ecclesias- 
tical centers as missionary colleges. 

Especially should it be noted that the Moravian 



lect. xn.3 GROWTH. 465 

church maintained its evangelical soundness and 
evangelistic activity throughout the eighteenth 
century — a century of religious inertness on the 
continent of Europe ; a century of spiritual cold- 
ness, formalism and ever-widening rationalism. 
In spite of an uninviting native soil and atmos- 
phere, Zinzendorf s grain of mustard-seed kept 
on growing slowly and steadily till it has become 
a great tree, and many are the birds of the air 
that have lodged in the branches thereof. One 
hundred years ago (1790) there were less than 
thirty stations; now there are more than three 
times that r number (ninety-eight), besides fifteen 
out-stations. 1 A century and a half ago, a few 
shillings in the pockets of two poor men con- 
stituted the entire fund of the United Brethren 
available for foreign missions; now the average 
annual income from Moravian sources at home 
is about one hundred thousand dollars, and 
not far from a hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
lars from other sources. More than two thou- 
sand brethren and sisters (2,158) 2 have engaged 



1 At the first jubilee (1782) there were twenty-seven stations 
and one hundred and sixty-five missionaries; at the second 
jubilee (1832) there were forty-one stations, two hundred and 
nine missionaries, and forty thousand adherents. 

2 At the present time, July, 1881, the stations are served by 
three hundred and fifteen missionaries, male and female — of 
whom thirty-three are natives — and one thousand four hundred 
and seventy-one native assistants. 

30 



466 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

in the foreign work; and, at the present time, 
there are, under the care of missionaries, over 
seventy-four thousand souls 1 — more than twice 
the number of members in the home churches 
of the United Brethren throughout the Ger- 
man, English and American provinces. But the 
church has by no means been able to respond 
favorably to all requests for new undertakings; 
between the meetings of the last two General 
Synods (1869-1879), seventeen such proposals 
came before the Mission Department. Growth, 
however, still continues ; the last fifty years show- 
ing a gradual increase in nearly every important 
item. 

Yet mere numerical increase of converts from 
heathenism has never been their ambition. This 
is a fundamental maxim, and evidence thereof 
runs through their published declarations. " We 
adhere firmly to the principle that, in our efforts 
for the conversion of the heathen, w r e will not 
chiefly aim at a large number of persons nomi- 
nally brought to a profession of Christianity, but 
strive that, by means of the gospel preached with 
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, those 



1 There are twenty-five thousand two hundred and ninety- 
eight communicants. There are two hundred and eleven day- 
schools, with sixteen thousand four hundred and thirty-seven 
scholars ; and eighty-nine Sunday-schools, with twelve thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-one scholars. 



lect.xii.] COMITY. 467 

committed to our charge may be really turned 
1 from darkness unto light, and from the power 
of Satan unto God.' It is requisite, first of all, 
emphatically to insist upon the necessity of 
change of heart (John iii : 3), and then to show 
that true faith (James ii : 17) must manifest itself 
as the power of God in the life by the fruits of 
the Spirit (Gal. v: 22)." J Their missions are sub- 
stantially moulded, so far as circumstances per- 
mit, after settlements planted in the three Mora- 
vian provinces, so that there is real and visible 
unity throughout the world, though the regions 
and nationalities are so remote from one another. 
To secure genuine conversion and holy living, 
the Moravians, like all other Christian laborers, 
find no easy task, especially in communities where 
concubinage has long prevailed, and yet more 
especially in the neighborhood of Roman Catho- 
lic missionaries — not to name any Protestants 
— who are ready to baptize illegitimate children, 
and to grant the parents of such children a formal 
or implied standing in their churches. 

As might be expected, they observe missionary 
comity, not building upon other men's founda- 
tions. "Ever guard against proselyting," is en- 
joined upon all missionaries; "but, if members 
of other churches are led by change of residence 
or by marriage to seek fellowship, receive them, 

1 Results of the General Synod of 1879, 114. 



468 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. Elect, xn. 

yet not without a letter of recommendation from 
their minister." 1 "We never enter into contro- 
versy with any other denomination, nor do we 
endeavor to draw their members over to us. 
Much less do we attempt to win over to our 
church any of the heathen who are already in 
connection with those of any other church." 2 A 
vast amount of friction on foreign ground would 
have been saved if the agents of other denomina- 
tions were equally scrupulous, or if all converts 
were as wise as the one who said to an Anglican 
clergyman, when he was endeavoring to entice 
her away from the Moravian connection : " It 
will be well if you keep on in your church, and 
I will keep on in mine." One advantage in 
many of the heathen fields selected by them is, 
that they are of such a character as to screen 
them from outside proselyting cupidity. 

The United Brethren deem the heathen to be 
entitled to an urgent compassion. The Mission 
Department gives injunctions in terms such as 
these : " Being animated by this tender solici- 
tude, you will not fail to be faithful in seeking 
the lost, patient in tending those that have been 
found, and constant in your intercession for all. 
Ah, dear brethren, it requires great faithfulness 

1 Instructions to Missionaries of the West Indies, 10. 

2 A Declaration Relative to Labor Among the Heathen. By 
Bishop Spangenberg. 1768. Also, Instructions for Missionaries. 
Second edition. London, 1840. 



lect.xii] READINESS FOE SERVICE. 469 

in seeking the lost, for the wandering sheep have 
gone far astray. Many a weary walk will you 
take in vain; many an earnest call will be lost in 
the air; many a kind entreaty will be slighted. 
But tender love for their benighted souls will not 
allow you to give up your search till you have 
found the poor sheep, and brought it home with 
joy. Strong is the power of Satan in holding cap- 
tive the souls of men, but stronger, we trust, will 
be your compassion for them, which will urge 
you forward, till you have snatched them out of 
his hands, and brought them as trophies to Iru- 
manuel." 

Certain characteristics of Moravian missionaries 
attract our attention — characteristics which re- 
sult from the prevailing type of piety, as well as 
the social condition and habits of the church at 
home. So fully is the duty of evangelizing the 
heathen lodged in their current thought, that the 
fact of any one's entering personally upon that 
work never creates surprise ; it falls in with ac- 
knowledged obligations and general expectation ; 
for no one is ever urged to undertake the foreign 
service, nor is urgency ever required. The an- 
swer of Ledyard, on his return to England from 
an expedition, and on being at once sought for 
by the African Association, will always remain 
historical. To the question when he would be 
ready to set out, he replied, "Tomorrow morning." 
So, too, Sir Colin Campbell asked for only twenty- 



470 MOEAVIAN MISSION'S. Clect. xii. 

four hours before starting for India. But the 
former was habituated to distant travels, and the 
other to military exigencies. At Marienborn, 
Zinzendorf sent one day for a Moravian brother, 
and said to him : "Will you go to Greenland tomor- 
row as a missionary?" The man has had no pre- 
vious intimation of the matter. For just a moment 
he hesitates, and then answers: " If the shoemaker 
can finish the boots that I have ordered of him by 
tomorrow, I will go." * Promptness of obedience 
to any call recognized as from God, so far from 
being exceptional and awakening surprise, is ha- 
bitual. It is a settled conviction that the most 
abject and most remote of our race are within the 
line of that covenant which embraces the ends of 
the earth ; that such are not beyond the redeem- 
ing efficacy of Christ's blood; and hence are to 
have a place in Moravian prayers, and, if possible, 
in Moravian personal efforts. 

The circumstance that the objects of evangelis- 
tic interest may be difficult of access, far distant, 
and far down on the social scale, is not regarded 
as a thing that calls for highly demonstrative pro- 
ceedings, or for a widespread heralding, as if 
something marvelous, or even unusual, were in 
hand. The spectacular has no place in anything 



1 When William Chalmers Burns was appointed missionary 
to China, and was inquired of when he could be ready to start, 
he answered, " Tomorrow." 



lect. xii.] UNOSTENTATIOUS HABITS. 471 

that concerns mission-work by the United Breth- 
ren. The kingdom of Heaven cometh not with 
observation ; the clear shining of the light makes 
no noise, and requires no voucher. "We think it 
a great mistake," said the Rev. Christian Ignatius 
Latrobe, many years secretary of the Brethren in 
England, "we think it a great mistake, after their 
appointment, when they are held up to public no- 
tice and admiration, and much praise is bestowed 
upon their devotedness to the Lord, presenting 
them to the congregation as martyrs and confes- 
sors, before they have even entered upon their la- 
bors. We rather advise them to be sent out quietly, 
recommended to the fervent prayers of the con- 
gregation, which is likewise most agreeable to 
their own feelings if they are humble followers 
of Christ." With an exemption from the illusive 
and the romantic that is noteworthv, and a so- 
briety and an unostentatious bearing that com- 
mand confidence and even admiration, candidates 
for foreign service start on their long journeys and 
voyages. Their inspiration has a higher and more 
enduring source than the popular platform, or the 
emblazonment of the press. It never seems to be 
so much their desire to have the praise of men in 
their ears as the peace of God in their souls. Few 
failures in Christian standing have occurred among 
them. The genius of Herrnhut, and of its mis- 
sions no less, finds utterance in the Litany, where, 
amidst entreaties for personal blessings, occurs the 



472 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

petition : " From the unhappy desire of becoming 
great, preserve us, gracious Lord and God." Once 
arrived at their destination, and introduced to all 
the varied experiences of their work, missionaries, 
when writing home, send only an unvarnished nar- 
rative of proceedings. No staff of foreign laborers 
give less exaggerated reports, or reports with less 
suppression of unwelcome truth. 

I have spoken of promptness for service It 
must not be understood that this proceeds from 
any apparent constraint, otherwise than as the 
love of Christ constraineth them. Missionaries 
of the United Brethren go cheerfully to their 
allotted sections in the great and rugged vine- 
yard ; for the most part, they toil not only Avith- 
out murmuring, but with contentment. The tecli- 
ousness of exile is beguiled by sacred song ; their 
temperament is neither sanguine nor melancholic; 
difficulties they meet with serene indifference or 
with persistent hopefulness. Christian loyalty 
knows nothing of latitude. On the part of 
Moravians, the accepted sentiment is, that in 
God's providence it falls peculiarly to them to 
go out into the highways and hedges of the 
wide world, to cultivate an aptitude for the im- 
practicable, as others would term it; and hence 
it requires no effort for them to become pioneers, 
the outlying pickets, of the great missionary army. 
Tribes the most stolid, debased, isolated, and 
insignificant, are chiefly their chosen sphere. 



lkct.xii.] MISSIONARY CHILDREN. 478 

And, in carrying glad tidings to such, should there 
be any less gladness than on the same errand 
to the more cultured and the more populous? 
Are such any less in need of the gospel, any 
less within the scope of Christ's last com- 
mand ? 

For those called to spend their best days in 
such uncongenial regions, it is a relief that pen- 
sions, though small, are secured to missionaries 
— as is true of all who hold any spiritual office — 
when disabled by old age or otherwise; and it 
is also no small relief that their children are 
to be educated at the general expense, being 
sent to Germany or elsewhere, for that purpose, 
when about eight years of age. It indicates a 
hearty traditional interest in the good work, that 
the children and children's children of so many 
missionary families should follow in the steps 
of their parents. One member of the present 
directing board, formerly a missionary himself 
in South Africa, has three children in the ser- 
vice; and quite recently Mrs. Berkenhagen has 
gone to the Mosquito coast, a representative 
of the sixth generation of her family — that of 
Matthew Stach, in direct descent — which has 
been devoted to foreign work in Greenland and 
Central America for one hundred and fifty 
years. 

A word is required in regard to financial 
matters. Besides contributions by members of 



474 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

the church in the home provinces, some mention 
should be made, among the sources of revenue, 
of the funded legacies — yielding about eighteen 
thousand dollars annually — which have been left 
for missionary purposes with the proviso that 
the interest alone be used ; and reference should 
be made to annual grants from associations estab- 
lished in the three provinces of the church. Of 
these the chief are : " The Brethren's Society for 
the Furtherance of the Gospel," established in 
London, 1741, which owns a missionary vessel 
and assumes the entire support of the Labra- 
dor Mission; "The Missionary Society of Zeist," 
Holland, dating from 1793, which has largely 
aided in supporting the work in Surinam ; " The 
Missionary Union of North Schleswig," dating 
from 1843 ; " The Society of the United Brethren 
for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen," 
organized at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1787; 
and "The Wachovia Society of the United Breth- 
ren for Propagating the Gospel among the Hea- 
then," at Salem, North Carolina, originated in 
1823. These are simply auxiliaries for raising 
funds; they do not themselves commission or 
send out laborers ; and hence should not be enu- 
merated, as is sometimes done, among foreign 
missionary societies. 

The economical regimen and habits of Moravian 
missionaries deserve notice. One governing idea 
throughout the church, whether in its home or its 



LECT. XII.] 



FRUGALITY. 475 



missionary provinces, is the reflex of their name, 
Unitas Fratrum. The unity of the whole body is 
sedulously promoted in many ways. It is a duty 
required of the stronger to aid the weaker, and 
of every one to help the community. Whatever, 
then, any missionary may earn is passed to the 
credit of the general treasury. On the score of 
accumulation there can be no invidious distinc- 
tions, for no missionary may engage in any busi- 
ness on his own account, and no one who carries 
on business for the mission has a right to claim a 
share in the profits. 1 

True, the classes in society from which they 
come are, in large part, of that grade which is 
accustomed to frugality — artisans and husband- 
men. A majority of them are beforehand inured 
to toil; yet, independently of this, they gladly 
accept the apostolic example of ministering with 
their own hands to their own necessities. The 
benefit of the whole is enforced as a motive. 
It is a sentiment deeply inwrought among the 
United Brethren that all labor, manual no less 



1 Regulations Issued by the Missionary Department, 21. 

" If our missionaries have private property, they are not abso- 
lutely expected to make use of the interest or principal for their 
subsistence. But it is to be understood that such articles as 
serve only for enjoyment or convenience, and are not needed 
for actual subsistence or the discharge of official duties, are 
never to be procured otherwise than at private expense/' 
Ibid, 15. 



476 MOEAVIAN" MISSIONS. Clect. xn. 

than evangelistic, should be carried on as a con- 
secrated part of life ; x and hence, in their concep- 
tion, there is nothing so rough or so humble as 
not to have dignity and beauty. Our wants 
always depend largely upon our manageable 
desires ; and Moravian missionaries make up their 
minds to have but few wants. Their style of 
living, and the surroundings with which they fur- 
nish themselves, are simple, comparatively inex- 
pensive, and happily less removed from the means 
and modes of those whom they seek to benefit 
than is the case with sundry other Protestant 
missionaries. To make upon natives the impres- 
sion of wealth is to stimulate their greed, and to 
render a successful presentation of saving truth 
much more difficult. Experience for over a hun- 
dred years has uniformly shown that a conscien- 
tious management of temporal affairs stands in 
close connection with internal prosperity, while 
unfaithfulness or carelessness in temporalities has 
been no less closely related to spiritual decay. 2 

From what has been said, it should not be in- 
ferred that these foreign laborers are ignorant and 



1 " The missionary should take a pleasure in saving or earn- 
ing whatever he can, with propriety, on behalf of the mission 
in which he is employed, remembering that everything saved 
or earned is an advantage to the General Mission Fund, the 
claims upon which have become so numerous and so heavy." 
Instructions to Missionaries. Second edition. London, 1840. 

2 Regulations Issued by the Mission Department, 17. 



lect.xii.] LITERABY LABOKS. 477 

altogether uncultivated. Taken as a whole, they 
are persons of good natural parts, good temper, 
practical wisdom, and a good common education. 
Many are thoroughly educated; some have been, 
and some now are, excellent scholars, as, for in- 
stance, at the present time, the Superintendent 
of the Jamaica Mission, who is a proficient in 
classical and Hebrew learning. Whatever the 
nationality, some degree of acquaintance with 
the English language is very general among 
them. In 1869, a missionary training-school was 
opened at Nisky, twenty miles from Herrnhut, 
in Prussian Silesia, for the purpose of a more 
thorough preparation. The names of Zeisberger, 
Kleinschmidt, and Jaschke have a recognized 
place in philological circles. Abraham Luken- 
bach and Christian Denke should be named as 
among those who studied and developed Indian 
dialects; while, in South Africa, Hallbeck was 
classed among men of highly respectable literary 
attainments. Allusion to some specific specimens 
of literary work performed by missionaries of the 
Unity will indicate that a certain degree of learn- 
ing is not uncommon among them. Protestant 
missions are usually prompt, while Roman Cath- 
olic missions never are, to introduce portions, at 
least, of God's Word into heathen vernaculars. 
It might be expected that representatives of the 
Renewed Moravian Church would not be behind- 
hand in this appropriate work. Into the Eskimo 



478 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

dialect of Labrador there has been translated the 
entire Bible, which has been many times revised ; 
a Book of Psalmocty, containing eight hundred 
and eighty hymns and an appendix of Sankey's 
hymns ; a Harmony of the Gospels ; a Summary 
of Christian Doctrine ; Luther's Exposition of the 
Apostles' Creed ; Barth's Bible Stories ; Ques- 
tions and Answers on Scripture Names and Ex- 
pressions; a Liturgy; various tracts; Song-Book, 
with music, for schools ; a Geography ; and a Dic- 
tionary in two volumes. In the Greenland dia- 
lect, besides a number of the foregoing, there is, 
in addition to the old Grammar and Dictionary 
by Stach, a recent Grammar by Kleinschmidt, to 
which men of learning accord high praise. The 
Arawak has been enriched by a part of the New 
Testament, besides a Harmony of the Gospels, a 
Hymn-Bock, a Grammar and a Dictionary. Sev- 
eral works have been rendered into the Kafir. 
I need not here repeat what has been said of 
works in the Delaware, the Creole-English, and 
the Thibetan; nor will I linger upon what has 
been accomplished in a few other tongues. 

It may seem invidious to speak of the devo- 
tional habits of Moravian missionaries ; yet this 
can be said, without breach of delicacy, that the 
church of the United Brethren is a praying 
church; and that the subject of gospel promulga- 
tion occupies probably a larger place in their 
devotions than among any other religious commu- 



lect.xii.] DEVOTIONAL HABITS. 479 

nity. To an unusual extent, their hymns for 
social worship relate to the coming triumphs of 
Christ's kingdom. In the liturgy prescribed for 
every Sunday-morning service are petitions like 
these : " Prosper the endeavors of all thy ser- 
vants to spread the gospel among heathen nations. 
Accompany the word of their testimony concern- 
ing thy atonement with demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power." The Monthly Concert for 
Pra) r er, on the first Monday of the month, is held 
in all the provinces. On the twenty-seventh of 
August, 1872, the Memorial Day of the Hourly 
Intercession of the Renewed Church (1727), there 
was instituted, by a voluntary movement, a Mora- 
vian Prayer Union ; and the members make use 
of topics for daily intercession in concert through 
the week. The topic for Monday is, " Christian 
Missionaries," prayer being offered — "for all mis- 
sionary societies and missions to both Jews and 
heathens; for the new work in Central Africa; 
for India and China; for our own foreign mis- 
sions in particular ; our brethren and sisters sta- 
tioned in heathen lands ; that more zeal and self- 
denial may be aroused at home on behalf of the 
mission cause ; that young men with a true mis- 
sionary spirit may be stirred up to offer them- 
selves for the Lord's work; and that all may 
learn the duty and privilege of serving the Lord 
by giving. We pray especially for a blessing 
upon our church's work in Bohemia, and for an 



480 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

open door for gospel labor in Moravia. " The 
Prayer Union has issued a little volume of daily 
prayers for households. 1 Among the supplica- 
tions on which our eye rests 2 are these: " Bless 
the congregations gathered from the heathen, in 
Labrador and Greenland, in South Africa and 
Australia, in North America and Central Asia, 
in Surinam and the Islands of the Western Sea. 
Own the labors and sustain the courage of our 
dear missionaries and their devoted wives, and 
enable them to commit their children to thy 
loving care for soul and body. Watch over thy 
messengers both by land^ and sea, and continue 
to hold thy hand over our ship Harmony in her 
annual voyages amidst ice and rocks and stormy 
seas. . . . Teach us to deny ourselves, that we 
may give to thee, whether of our abundance or 
our poverty. . . . May all our ministers and mis- 
sionaries adhere firmly to the word of thy cross, 
and with all boldness and simplicity preach Christ 
and him crucified; kindle and fan amongst us 
the flame of a truly missionary spirit; and pour 
out upon us and our whole church the spirit of 
grace and of supplications on behalf of thy great 
world-wide work." Missionaries share that spirit 
in no inferior degree ; they wait habitually upon 
God for the indications of his providence ; they 



1 London, 32 Fetter Lane. 

2 Pages 7-8, 77, 79. 



lect.xiio PROVIDENTIAL PRESERVATION. 481 

propose not to run before being sent, but, being 
sent, they trust with rare implicitness. 

When we consider the character of those tribes 
among whom labor has been carried on for a 
century and a half, it will seem surprising that 
no more Moravians have fallen by the hand of 
violence ; and, when it is further considered that 
the brethren and sisters who have been engaged 
in the foreign service number over two thousand, 
that most of them have crossed the ocean more 
than once, and that usually the voyages are at- 
tended by special perils, it must impress us that 
the sea holds no more of their dead to be given 
up on the resurrection morning. 1 Only thirty 



1 The following have lost their lives at sea : 

17-36. Andrew Hickel, the widows Maria Franke and Judith 
Leupold, on their return from the Danish West Indies. 

1740. Aibinus Theodore Feeder, of Tortola, on his passage 
to the West Indies. 

1742. Daniel Schneider, on his return from Greenland. 

1747. Joseph Shaw, his wife Maria, and J. M. Huber, on their 
voyage from North America to the Danish West Indies. 

1774. Christopher Brazen and Gottfried Lehman, on the 
coast of Labrador. 

1776. Anna Eosina Michel, wrecked off the Shetland Isles. 

1786. Christian Heinze and Sister Konigseer, on their return 
from Greenland. 

1798. J. Christian Hodgson and his wife Anne Elizabeth, ou 
their voyage from St. Kitts to Barbados. 

1817. John Frederick Kranich,on his return from Greenland. 

31 



482 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii 

are recorded as having suffered death by violence 
or accident. 1 

It would be strange if the mission-work of 
such a people did not conciliate, so far as it 
becomes known, the favorable regard of all evan- 
gelical Christians. That has been done, and not 
by a formal challenging of admiration, but by 
modest perseverance in their noble undertakings. 
It has fallen to them to lead the forlorn hope of 
evangelization. Oblivious of pestilence and the 
tornado, of privation, opposition and contempt, 
they have held on in their appointed path of 
obedience to Christ's last command. Now and 
then invited to labor among Europeans settled 
as colonists, they have in no instance turned 
aside from their devotion to the barbarian. Suc- 



1 The following fourteen have lost their lives at or near 
their respective stations : 

1748. George Zeisberger, drowned in the Cottika, in Suri- 
nam. 

1752. Seven Brethren, three sisters, and a child, either shot 
or burned with their dwelling, by Indians who destroyed the 
Mission House at Gnadenhiitten on the Mahony. 

1752. J. Christian Ehrhardt, killed by the Eskimos, while 
exploring the coast of Labrador. 

1782. Joseph Sehebosh, shot by the murderers of ninety- 
six Indian converts near Gnadenhiitten, on the Muskingum, 
Ohio. 

1800. John Michael Reiman lost his way, near Hopedale in 
Labrador, during a violent snow-storm. Periodical Accounts, 
XIX, 159. 



LECT. XII.] 



AID FEOM WITHOUT, 



483 



cess often requires a period of long toil, but impa- 
tience for results has not been manifested. 

The esteem and confidence thus won have led 
to spontaneous pecuniary assistance from outside 
sources. In 1817, the London Association in 
Aid of the Brethren's Missions was formed by 
individuals not members of the Moravian Church, 
and now has auxiliaries and branches — some of 
them in Wales — amounting to nearly one hun- 
dred. From this organization, characteristic of 
English liberality, there is received an average 
annual income of about twenty-five thousand 
dollars, and a total sum, from the first, of more 
than one million five hundred and sixty-five thou- 
sand dollars. 1 A Dutch Society for the Promo- 



1 Large Individual Gifts. 


1832. Lord Bexley gave 


$50,000 


1872 - ) A ^ . , 
1875 ( friend gave 


( 3,485 
' \ 5,000 


1880. Anon, gave . 


10,000 


Large Legacies. 




1865. G. Harryman gave 


9,000 


1868. Miss Flavel gave 


5,000 


1868. ) ,,. m . m 

1 ««q > Miss Tottingham gave 


42,065 


1869. Mr. Banniston gave 


10,000 


1869. J. W. Brett gave . 


9,965 


1873. ) 

1874 I ^ ss Harrison gave 


22,865 


1875. Mrs. Livins gave . 


8,780 


1875. Miss Berryman gave . 


20,290 



484 MOBAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect. xn. 

tion of Christian Knowledge among the Negroes 
of Surinam was established in 1828; while in 
Denmark there was formed, some years since, 
an association called the Schleswig-Holstein So- 
ciety, whose chief object is to assist Moravian 
missions in the Danish Islands. 

" When a man's ways please the Lord, he 
maketh even his enemies to be at peace with 
him." Moravians as a body have met with some 
censures, chiefly undeserved ; Moravian missions 
have been but little criticised. The inquiry may 
fairly arise, whether sufficient pains have been 
taken in the older foreign fields to educate 
native churches in the line of self-support, and 
to bring forward a native pastorate. Great pains 
have, indeed, been bestowed upon both of these 
highly important and closely related items of 
missionary policy; but the question is, whether 
they have been pressed with all the urgency that 
the best interests of evangelization require. It 
would seem that, after so long a period, a greater 
amount of local independence should here and 
there have been secured by the reproduction, 
out of native stock, of churches fully equipped 
according to the New Testament model — though 
their social grade might not be a high one — and 
in turn entering themselves upon the work of 
evangelization. As regards money raised among 
the missions — the annual amount being toward 
a hundred thousand (198,000) dollars — it should 



LECT. XII.] 



ESTIMATES. 485 



be said that, while stated contributions are made 
by converts and by native missionary societies 
towards the sustenance of their own churches, 
there is an income from traffic and trade. This 
ought to be reckoned only in part to the score 
of strictly indigenous self-support. Labrador 
traffic, for instance, which is carried on with 
England, forms a department quite separate 
from the work of the mission, and is committed 
to men sent out by the Board expressly for that 
purpose. In St. Thomas, Surinam, Mosquitia, 
and South Africa, there are unordained mission- 
aries who devote themselves to such secular 
matters, and yet act also as assistants in evangel- 
istic work. This agency is carefully guarded, as 
it has need to be, against abuse. 

Criticisms, however, whether they relate to the 
church or to its foreign work, seldom call forth 
reply. Bishop Spangenberg, when asked whether 
public replies should be given to misrepresenta- 
tions, gave an utterance which is still repeated : 
" Remain silent and wait upon the Lord." Quiet- 
ness has not been without its reward. Many a 
distinguished man, on becoming acquainted with 
Moravians, whether missionaries or otherwise, 
has felt a deep interest in them. Such, for ex- 
ample, was Lord Gambier, the well-known ad- 
miral. When he sent ashore the despatch at Co- 
penhagen demanding the answer of the Danish 
fleet, w^ith the alternative of bombardment, he 



486 MORAVIAN MISSIONS. [lect.xii. 

made use of the opportunity to forward some 
" weekly leaves " to the Moravian minister who 
was then at the Danish capital. From the ranks 
of sister churches there occasionally comes for- 
ward a witness who can not refrain from hearty 
panegyric. In 1808, Bishop Porteus was moved 
to publish his opinion: "Among other religious 
communities, they who have most distinguished 
themselves in the business of conversion are the 
Moravians, or United Brethren. These, indeed, 
have shown a degree of zeal, of vigor, of perse- 
verance, of unconquerable spirit, and firmness of 
mind, which no danger, no difficulties, could sub- 
due (combined at the same time with the greatest 
gentleness, prudence and moderation), of which 
no example can be found since the first primitive 
age of Christianity." With reference to their 
evangelistic labor, Wilberforce spoke of them as 
" a body of Christians who have, perhaps, excelled 
all mankind in solid and unequivocal proofs of 
the love of Christ, and of the most ardent, active, 
and patient zeal in his service. It is a zeal tem- 
pered with prudence, softened with meekness, so- 
berly aiming at great ends by the gradual opera- 
tion of well-adapted means, supported by a courage 
which no danger can intimidate, and a quiet con- 
stancy which no hardship can exhaust." " Oh, 
when one looks at the number and greatness of 
their achievements," exclaims Doctor Chalmers, 
" when he thinks of the change they have made 



LECT. XII.] 



ESTIMATES. 487 



on materials so coarse and unpromising ; when he 
eyes the villages they have formed, and, around 
the whole of that engaging perspective by which 
they have chequered and relieved the grim soli- 
tude of the desert, he witnesses the love, and list- 
ens to the piety, of reclaimed savages — who 
would not long to be in possession of the charm 
by which they have wrought this wondrous trans- 
formation ? who would not willingly exchange for 
it all the parade of human eloquence, and all the 
confidence of human argument?" 1 

Most inspiring it is to contemplate such an ex- 
ample — the example of a brotherhood so small, 
with seven hundred and fifty of its communicant 
membership — ordained and unordained, male and 
female — engaged in the active official service of 
the church ; and which, while supplying a minis- 
try for its congregations, numbering about one 
hundred and fifty in the home provinces, sends 
out nearly one in every fifty of its communicants 
for foreign missionary work. One little commu- 
nity, that of Konigsfeld in the Black Forest, num- 
bering only four hundred and eighteen souls, has 
twenty-one of its sons and daughters in such ser- 



1 Rev. E. Garbett says : " I am convinced that, in proportion 
to the number of its members and to the means at its disposal, 
the church of the United Brethren has done more to extend the 
kingdom of Christ throughout the world than any other church 
that exists." The Past and Present Condition of Moravian Mis- 
sions. 



488 MOBAYIAN MISSIONS. Clect xii. 

vice at this time. Have they not deserved well 
of the Christian world, and of the heathen world, 
too? If all Protestant churches had been equally 
devoted, equally enterprising, for the last century 
and a half, not an unevangelized man or woman 
would now remain on earth. The stream has 
been small, but unfailing and pure, and it has fer- 
tilized many a desert. Other communions have 
here "a little sister" who hath done what she 
could; the perfume of her alabaster box hath 
filled the house ; the possibilities of poverty and 
paucity of numbers have been demonstrated. 
This quiet fidelity in missionary toils has been a 
silent rebuke and a stimulus to Protestant Chris- 
tendom; it has been a noiseless and not fully 
acknowledged motive-force in the subsequent en- 
deavors of other communions in behalf of the hea- 
then. But what one of them in modern times has 
exhibited such enfranchisement from self-seeking, 
and such persistent loyalty to Christ's final order? 
Is there not urgency upon us, too? Let the dead 
of the past and of the present bury their dead. 
Would that at the head of every great division of 
the sacramental host there might be a sanctified 
Barbarossa ! Marching for the re-conquest of Je- 
rusalem, word comes to him that his son is dead. 
"Woe to me!" cries the monarch; "is my son 
dead ? " And tears course down his beard. " My 
son is slain, but Christ still lives ! Forward then, 
soldiers ; march ! " 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 1 



LECTURE I. THE MORAVIANS. 

THE RENEWED CHURCH. 

I. HISTORY AND CHARACTERISTICS. 

1. Cranz, David, (a) Alte und neue Briiderhistorie, 1722. 

(Continued by Henger.) (6) The Ancient and Modern 
History of the Brethren. (Translation with notes by 
Benj. Latrobe. London, 1780.) 

2. Nachricht von dem Ursprung, u. s. w. der Briider-Unitat, 

1781. (Yorrede von A. E. Biisching.) 

3. Holmes, John. History of the Protestant Church of the 

United Brethren. 2 vols. London, 1825. 

4. Schaff, C. F. L. Evangelische Briidergemeinde, 1825. 

5. Bost, J. A. (a) Histoire de PEglise des Ereres de Boheme 

et Moravie. Paris, 1844. 2 vols, (b) History of the 
Moravians. (Translation and Abridgment, with an Ap- 
pendix. London Religious Tract Society. 1848. 

6. Litiz. Blicke in die Yergangenheit und Gegenwart der 

Briider-Kirche. 1846. 

7. Croger, E. W. Geschichte der erneuerten Briider-Kirche. 

3 Thle. Gnadau, 1852-1854. 

8. (a) Gedenktage der erneuerten Briider-Kirche. Neue Auf. 

1848. (b) The Memorial Days of the Renewed Church 
of the Brethren. (Translation from an earlier edition, 
1821.) 



1 References are not made to encyclopaedias — Herzog, McClintock 
and Strong, Britannica, etc., — to ethnological works — Prichard, Waitz, 
Muller, Peschel, — nor to other comprehensive and miscellaneous works, 
in which pertinent information may be found. 

(491) 



492 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

9. Fourth Centennial Anniversary of the Moravian Church. 
Three Sermons. Philadelphia, 1857. 

10. Nitzsch, C. J. Kirchengesehichtliche Bedeutung der Brii- 

dergemeine, 1858. 

11. Henry, James. Sketches of Moravian Life and Character. 

Philadelphia, 1859. 

12. Brief Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Church 

of the Unitas Fratrum. London, 1860. 

13. Schweinitz, Edmund de. The Moravian Manual. Second 

edition. Bethlehem, 1869. 

14. Reichel, William C. Memorials of the Moravian Church. 

Philadelphia, 1870. 

15. Leitfaden zum Untericht iiber Geschichte, Zweck und 

Wesen, etc. 2 Auf. Gnadau, 1875. 

17. Kurtzgefasste Nachricht von der ev. Briider-Unitat. 

7 Auf. 1876. 

18. Moravian Life : An English Girl's [Beatrice Stebbing] 

Account of a Settlement in the Black Forest. General 
Protestant Episcopal Sunday-school Union. New York. 

II. biography. 1 

1. Risler, Jeremias. Leben August Gottlieb Spangenberg. 

Barby, 1794. 

2. Benham, Daniel. Sketch of the Life of John Comenius. 

(Prefixed to his " School of Infancy." London, 1858.) 

3. Johnson, Walter R. Memoir of Lewis David von Schwein- 

itz. Philadelphia, 1835. 

4. Holland and Everett. Memoirs of James Montgomery. 

7 vols. London, 1854. 

5. Knight, Helen C. Life of James Montgomery. Boston, 

1857. 

6. Benham, Daniel. Memoirs of James Hutton. London, 

1856. 

7. Benham, Daniel. Life and Labors of Bishop Gambold. 

London, 1865. 

8. Lockwood, J. P. Memorials of the Life of Peter Bohler. 

London, 1868. 

1 See also Literature for the Lecture on Count Zinzendorf. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 493 

9. Ritter, Abraham. History of the Moravian Church in 
Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1857. 

10. Hankin, Christiana C. Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpen- 

ninck. Fourth edition. London, 1860. 

11. Schweinitz, Edmund de. Some of the Fathers of the 

American Moravian Church. Bethlehem, 1882. 

III. POLITY, RITUAL, AND BELIEF. 

1. Spangenberg, A. G. {a) Idea Fidei Fratrum, oder kurtzer 

Begriff, etc. Barby, 1779. (b) Exposition of Christian 
Doctrine as taught in the Church of the United Brethren. 
(Translation, second edition. London, 1792.) 

2. Bengel, J. A. Abriss der Briidergemeine. 1751. 

3. Schneckenburger, M. Vorlesungen liber die LehrbegrLffe 

der Kleineren protestantischen Kirchenparteien. Frank- 
furt a. M., 1863. 

4. Ebrard, J. H. A. Handbuch der Christ. Kirchen- und Dog- 

men-Geschichte. 1866. 4 Bde. Vierter Band. 132-146. 

5. Synodal Results. Sundry volumes. (Especially those of 

1848, 1857, 1869, 1879.) 

6. Schweinitz, Edmund de. The Moravian Episcopate. 

Bethlehem, 1865. 

7. Schaff, Philip. Creeds of Christendom. Three volumes. 

New York, 1877. 1/ pp. 874-881. 111,789-806. 

8. Catechism of Christian Doctrine for the Instruction of 

Youth. Philadelphia, 1875. 

9. Catechism for the Instruction of Candidates for Confirma- 

tion. Philadelphia, 1876. 

10. Hymn Books. (Various editions, with and without the 

Liturgy.) 

11. Hist. Nachricht vom Briider-Gesangbuche des Jahres, 1778. 

Barby, 1851. 

THE ANCIENT CHUBCH. 

I. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. Cranz, David. Alte und neue Briiderhistorie, 1722. (In 
the translation by Benj. Latrobe, twenty-two authorities 
are prefixed.) 



494 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

2. Gindely, A. Quellen zur Geschichte der Bohmischen Brii- 

der. Wien, 1859. (Vol. XIX of the Fontes Rerum Aus- 
tricarum.) 

3. Schweinitz, Edmund de. The Moravian Episcopate. 

Bethlehem, 1865. (With historical notices of leading 
authorities.) 

4. Reus, Rodolphe. La Destruction du Protestantisme en 

Boheme. Nouv. Ed. Strasbourg et Paris, 1868. 125- 
139. (For years 1618-1630, one hundred and twenty-five 
authorities.) 

5. Czerwenka, Bernhard. Geschichte der evan. Kirche in 

Bohmen. 2 Bde. Bielefeld und Leipzig, 1869-1870. (In 
the Preface xi-xv, over twenty authorities, with, more or 
less of criticism. Also Volume II, Preface v-xi.) 

6. Malin, W. G. Catalogue of Books relating to the Unitas 

Fratrum. Philadelphia, 1881. 

II. HISTORY AND BELIEF. 

1. (a) Historia Persecutionum Ecclesia? Bohemicae, 1648. (b) 

The History of the Bohemian Persecution. London, 
1650. (A translation.) (c) Das Persecutionsbiichlein. 
(German translation of Historia, etc., by Bernhard 
Czerwenka, 1869.) 

2. Comenius, J. A. (a) De Bono Unitatis, etc. (Reprinted in 

London, 1710.) (b) An Exhortation of the Churches of 
Bohemia. (Translation by Thomas Parkhurst. 1661.) 

3. Gedenktage der alten Briider-Kirche, nebst einem An- 

hange, 1840. 

4. Gillett, E. H. Life and Times of John Huss. 2 vols. 

Third edition. Boston, 1871. . 

5. Benham, Daniel. Life of Comenius. (Prefixed to his 

" School of Infancy." London, 1858.) 

6. Laurie, S. S. John Amos Comenius, Bishop of the 

Moravians, his Life and Educational Works. London, 
1881. 

7. Benham, Daniel. Notes on the Origin and Episcopate of 

the Bohemian Brethren. London, 1858. 

8. Ratio Discipline Ordinisque Ec. in Unitate Fratrum Bohe- 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 495 

morum. (The original Latin, with a translation. Notes 
and Introduction by B. B. SeifHerth. London, 1866.) 
9. Palackt, T. Geschichte von Bohmen. 10 Bde. Prag, 
1844-1867. 

10. Palackt, T. Die Vorlaufer des Hussitenthums. 1869. 

11. Pescheck, C. A. Geschichte der Gegenreformation in 

Bohmen. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1850. (A translation ap- 
peared, London^ 1845.) 

12. Gindely, A. Geschichte der Bohmischen Briider im Zeit- 

alter der Reformation. Bde. 1857-1858. 

13. Croger, E. W. Geschichte der alten Briider-Kirche. 2 Bde. 

1865-1866. 

14. Reus, Rodolphe. La Destruction du Protestantisme en 

Boheme. Nouv. Ed. Strasbourg et Paris, 1868. 

15. Czerwenka, B. Geschichte der evang. Kirche in Bohmen. 

2 Bde. 1869-1871. 

16. Whatelt, E. Jane. The Gospel in Bohemia. London 

Religious Tract Society. 

17. Means, J. W. Heroes of Bohemian Life. Philadelphia, 

1879. 

18. Schweinitz, Edmund de. Catechism of the Bohemian 

Brethren, from the Old German, with an Introduction. 
Bethlehem, 1869. 

19. Schaff, Philip. Creeds of Christendom. 3 vols. New 

York, 1877. 1,565-591. 



LECTURE II. COUNT ZINZENDORF. 1 

1. Jung, W. E. Der in dem Grafen von Zinzendorf noch 
lebende und lehrende wie auch leidende und siegende 
Doctor Luthur. 1752. 



1 See Zinzendorf s Writings, which number about one hundred and 
fifty publications. 



496 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

2. Spangenberg, A, G. # (a) Leben des Herrn N. L. Graf en 

von Zinzendorf 8 Thle. 1772-1775. (b) (Translated and 
abridged by Samuel Jackson, with Introduction by P. 
Latrobe. London, 1838.) 

3. Spangenberg, A. G. Darlegung richtiger Antworten auf 

mehr als drey hundert Beschuldigungen gegen den Or- 
dinarium Fratrum. 

4. Muller, J. G. Bekentnisse Merkwiirdiger Manner. 1775. 

Band drit. 

5. Schrautenbach, L. C. von. Der Graf von Zinzendorf und 

die B ruder gerneine seiner Zeit. 1782. 

6. Duvernoy, J. C. Kurzgefasste Lebensgeschichte des u. s. w. 

1793. 

7. Reichel, G. B. Leben des Grafen von Zinzendorf, 1790. 

8. Varnhagen von Ense. Leben des Grafen von Zinzendorf. 

1830. 

9. Tholuck, A. Vermischte Scriften. 1839. I, 433-64. 

10. Kolbing, F. W. Der Graf von Zinzendorf : Eine Skizze. 

11. Verbeck, J. W. Des Grafen N. L. von Zinzendorf Leben 

und Character. 1845. 

12. Knapp, A. Geistliche Gedichte mit einer Lebenskizze des 

Grafen von Zinzendorf. 1845. 

13. Schroder, J. F. Der Graf von Zinzendorf und Herrnhut. 

1857. 

14. Pilgram, F. Leben und Wirken des Grafen N. L. von 

Zinzendorf. 1857. 

15. Henrt, James. Sketches of Moravian Life and Character. 

Philadelphia, 1859. pp. 59-98. 

16. Bovet, Felix, (a) Le Comte de Zinzendorf. Paris, 1860. 

(b) (Translated by John Gill, under the unauthorized 
title of " The Banished Count.") 

17. Plath, C. H. C. Sieben Zeugen des Herrn. 1869. pp. 

75-105. 

18. Plitt, Hermann. Zinzendorf s Theologie. 3 Bde. 1869- 

1874. 

19. Glaubrecht, D. Zinzendorf in der Wetterau. 1879. 



LITERATURE OP THE SUBJECTS. 497 



LECTURE III. WEST INDIES. 

I. THE ISLANDS. 

1. Edwards, Bryan. History, Civil and Commercial, of the 

British West Indies. 5 vols. Fifth edition. London. 
1812. 

2. Thorne, J. A., and Kimball, J. H. Emancipation in the 

West Indies. New York, 1838. 

3. Baird, Robert. Impressions and Experiences in the West 

Indies. Philadelphia, 1849. 

4. Davy, J. The West Indies before and since Slave Emanci- 

pation. 1854. 
6. Montgomery, James. The West Indies : A Poem in Four 
Parts. 

6. Trollope, Anthony. The West Indies and the Spanish 

Main. Leipzig, 1860. 

7. Buxton, Charles. Slavery and Freedom in the British 

West Indies. London, 1860. 

8. Kingsley, Charles. At Last : A Christmas in the West 

Indies. 2 vols. 1871. 

9. Underhill, Edward B. The West Indies. London. 
10. Horsford, J. A Voice from the West Indies. 1856. 

ii. the mission. 1 

1. Missionary Records : West Indies. London Religious 

Tract Society. 

2. Missions of the Church of the United Brethren in the 

Danish West India Islands. 2 London, 1832. 



1 In the Literature relating to Moravian Missions, no references are 
made to general mission histories, such as those of William Brown, 
Smith and Choules, Wiggers, Blumhardt, Burckhardt, Kalkar, and 
Grundemann ; nor to comprehensive works on Geography, Ethnography, 
and Religions. 

2 Harriet W. Ellis, in Denmark and Her Missions, 210-241, by a singu- 
lar mistake, treats of Moravian Missions to the Danish West Indies as 
if they were Danish Missions. 

32 



498 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

3. Buchner, J. H. The Moravians in Jamaica. London, 1854. 

4. Retrospect of the Brethren's Church in Jamaica. 

5. Retrospect of the Brethren's Church in Antigua. 

6. Retrospect of the Brethren's Church in St. Kitt's. 

7. Retrospect of the Brethren's Church in Barbados. 

8. Retrospect of the Brethren's Church in Tobago. 

9. Oldendorp, C. G. A. Geschichte der Mission den Caraib- 

ischen Inseln. 2 Th. Barby, 1777. 

10. Risler, J. Erzalungen. 

11. Missions-Bilder : Sechtes u Sieb. Heften. Calw, I8687 

1869. 



LECTURE IV. SOUTH AND CENTRAL 

AMERICA. 

I. COUNTRY AND PEOPLE. 

1. Raleigh, Sir Walter. The Disco verie of the Large, Rich, 

and Bewtivl Empire of Guiana, 1596. 

2. Humboldt and Bonpland. Travels to the Equinoctial Re- 

gions of America. 3 vols. 

3. Schomburgh, Robert H. A Description of British Guiana. 

London, 1840. 

4. Cotheal, Alex. J. Grammatical Sketch of the Language 

spoken by the Indians of the Mosquito Shore. In Trans- 
lations of American Ethnological Society. Vol. II. 

5. Henderson, George. Sketch of the Mosquito Indians. 

(pp. 164-237. Appended to his Account of Honduras. 
London, 1811.) 

6. Bericht iiber das Mosquitoland. Berlin, 1849. (p. 7, a 

limited Bibliography.) 

7. Bard, Samuel. [Squier, E. G.] Waikna : or, Adventures 

on the Mosquito Shore. New York, 1855. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS, 499 

8. Squier, E. G. The States of Central America. New York, 

1858. 

9. Squier, E. G. Monograph of Authors who have written 

on the Languages of Central America. London, 1861. 
(Over a hundred Authors; and an Appendix containing 
a list of books and MSS., more than fifty in number, 
relating wholly or in part to the History, Aborigines, and 
Antiquities of Central America.) 

10. Bell, Charles N. Kemarks on the Mosquito Territory. In 

Journal of London Geographical Society, Vol. XXXH, 
1862. 

11. Brett, W. H. Indian Tribes of Guiana. London, 1868. 

12. Brett, W. H. Mission Work in Guiana. London : Society 

for Promotion of Christian Knowledge. 

13. Brown, C. Barrington. Canoe and Canoe Life in British 

Guiana. London, 1876. 

14. Bates, H. W. Central and South America. London, 1878 

(Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travels.) 

II. THE MISSIONS. 

1. Missionary Guide Book. London, 1846. 

2. Bernau, J. H. Missionary Labors in British Guiana. Lon- 

don, 1847. pp. 62-73. 

3. Crowe, Erederick. The Gospel in Central America. Lon- 

don, 1850. 

4. Risler, J. Erzalungen. 

5. Quandt, E. Nachricht von Suriname und seinen Einwoh- 

nern. Gorlitz, 1807. 

6. Missions-Bilder : Sechtes Heft. Calw, 1868. 



LECTURE V. GREENLAND, 



I. BIBLIOGRAPHY, 



1. Jones, T. Rupert. Manual of the Natural History, Geology 
and Physics of Greenland. London, 1875. (The appendix, 



500 LITEEATUBE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

pp. 750-754, gives one hundred and sixteen authorities, in 
chronological order, from only 1816 to 1874, besides eight 
additional references.) 

2. Die Literatur iiber die Polar-Re gionen der Erde. 1878. 

3. Arctic Voyages of Adolph Erik Nordenskiold. London, 

1879. (List of books and memoirs relating to the Swedish 
Arctic Expeditions. Appendix II.) 

II. COUNTRY AND PEOPLE. 

1. Egede, Hans. A Description of Greenland. (From the 

German. With Historical Introduction and Life of the 
Author. London, 1818.) 

2. Cranz, David, (a) Historie von Gronland. 2 Bde. Barby, 

1765. Vol. I, 1-275. (b) History of Greenland. 2 vols. 
London, 1767. (A translation.) 

3. Graah, W. A. An Expedition to the East Coast of Green- 

land. (From the Danish.) London, 1837. 

4. Kane, Elisha K. The Land of Desolation. New York, 1856. 

5. Sargent, Epes. Arctic Adventures by Sea and Land, 1860. 

6. Hall, Charles T. Arctic Kesearches and Life among the 

Esquimaux. New York, 1845. 

7. Markham, Clement B. Arctic Geography and Ethnogra- 

phy. Eoyal Geographical Society. 1875. 

8. Eink, Henry. Tales and Traditions of the Eskimos. Lon- 

don, 1875. (From the Danish, by the author.) 

9. Bancroft, Hubert H. Native Eaces of the Pacific States. 

5 vols. New York, 1875. 
10. Brodbeck, F. Nach Osten. Niesky, 1882. 

III. THE MISSION. 

1. Cranz, David, (a) Historie von Gronland. 2 Bde. Barby, 

1765. (b) History of Greenland. 2 vols. London, 1767. 
(A translation.) 

2. Cranz, David. Fortsetzung der Briider-Historie. 2 Bde. 

1791. 

3. Kolbing, F. L. Die Mission der Evangelische Briider in 

Gronland. Gnadau, 1831. 

4. The Moravians in Greenland. Edinburgh, 1839. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 501 

5. Lives of Missionaries. Greenland : Matthew Stach and his 

Associates, pp. 88-224. London ; Society for Promotion 
of Christian Knowledge. 

6. Montgomery, James. Poems: Greenland (five cantos). 

IV. FOR THE YOUNG. 

1. Realm of the Ice King. London Religious Tract Society. 

2. Brightwell, Miss. Romance of Modern Missions. Lon- 

don Religious Tract Society. 

3. H. L. L. Story of Moravian Missions in Greenland and Lab- 

rador. London, 1873. 

4. Missionary Worthies in the Moravian Church. Philadel- 

phia : American Sunday School Union. 

5. Missionary Stories. London, 1826. 

6. Sketches of Moravian Worthies. Philadelphia : American 

Sunday School Union. 

7. Strangers in Greenland. American Tract Society. 

8. Missions-Bilder. Fiinftes Heft. Calw, 1867. 



LECTURE VI. LABRADOR. 

I. THE country. 

1. Dobbs, Arthur. An Account of the Countries Adjoining to 

Hudson's Bay. London, 1744. 

2. Cartwright, George. A Journal of Transactions and 

Events during a Residence of nearly Sixteen Years on the 
Coast of Labrador. 3 vols., quarto. Newark, 1790. 

3. Hind, Henry Y. Explorations in the Interior of the Labra- 

dor Peninsula. London, 1863. 

4. Noble, Louis L. After Icebergs with a Painter. New 

York, 1861. 

5. Harper's New Magazine. Vol. XXII, 1860. 

6. The Atlantic Monthly. Ice and the Esquimaux. Vol. 

XIV, 1860. 



502 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 



II. THE MISSION. 1 

1. Kolbing, F. L. Die Mission der Evangelischen Briider in 

Labrador. Gnadau, 1831. 

2. Missions in Labrador. Dublin, 1831. Religious Tract and 

Book Society for Ireland. 

3. (a) Die Missionen der Briider-Unitat Labrador. Gnadau, 

1871. (b) History of the Missions of the United Brethren 
in Labrador. 1871. 

4. Memoirs of Brother Benjamin Gottlieb Kohlmeister. Lon- 

don, 1845. 
6. Memoirs of Brother George Kmoch, Missionary in Labrador. 

London, 1858. 
6. Dewitz, A. von. An der Kiiste Labradors. Niesky, 1881. 



LECTURES VII AND VIII. NORTH- 
AMERICAN INDIANS. 

I. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. Ludwig, Hermann C. Literature of American Aboriginal 

Languages. (With additions and corrections by W. W. 
Turner. London, 1858.) 

2. Field, F. W. Essay toward an Indian Bibliography. New 

York, 1873. 

II. HISTORY, CHARACTERISTICS, LANGUAGES AND RELIGION. 

1. Heckewelder, John, (a) History, Manners and Customs 
of the Indian Nations. (Best edition that of Philadelphia. 
1876.) (b) German Translation, with additions by Hesse, 
Gottingen, 1821. (c) French Translation. Paris, 1822. 

1 Dr. William Brown makes no reference to this mission in his history. 



/ 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 503 

2. Edwards, Jonathan. (The Younger.) "Works. Andover, 
1842. Vol. I, 469-480. 
Z 3. Galatin, Albert. Synopsis of the Indian Tribes. (In 
Transactions American Antiquarian Society, Vol. II. Sup- 
plemented by papers in Transactions American Ethnolog- 
ical Society, Vols. I and II.) 

4. Schoolcraft, Henry R. Information respecting the Indian 
Tribes. 6 vols. 

5. Schoolcraft, Henry R. Algic Researches. Eirst Series. 
2 vols. New York, 1839. 

6. Catlin, George. Illustrations of the Manners, Customs and 
" Condition of the North-American Indians. 2 vols. Lon- 
don, 1841. 

7. Bancroft, George. History of the United States. Four- 
teenth edition. Boston, 1853. Vol. IH, 235-318. 

8. Parkman, Erancis. Conspiracy of Pontiac. Eighth edition 
2 vols. Boston, 1877. Vol. 1, 1-45. 

9. Parkman, Erancis. The Jesuits in North America. Eleventh 
edition. Boston, 1878. pp. xix-lxxix. 

10. Morgan, Lewis H. League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee ; or, The 
Iroquois. Rochester, 1854. 

11. De Forest, J. W. History of the Indians of Connecticut. 
Hartford. 

12. Drake, Samuel C. Aboriginal Races of North America. 
Fifteenth edition. Philadelphia, 1860. 

13. MrJLLER, J. G. Geschichte der Amer. Urreligionen. Basel, 
1855. pp. 1-151. 

14. Brinton, Daniel G. Myths of the New World. Second edi- 
tion. New York, 1876. 

15. Williams, Roger. Key to the Languages of America, 1864. 
(Edited, with Notes and Introduction, by J. H. Trumbull, 
for the Narragansett Club. Providence, 1866.) 

16. Pickering, John. Indian Languages of America. (An Ap- 
pendix to the Encyclopaedia Americana, 1836. Vol. VI, 
581-600.) 

17. Duponceau, Peter. Memoire sur le Systeme Grammaticale 
des Languages de FAme'rique du Nord. Paris, 1836. 

18. Trumbull, J. Hammond. (In Johnson's Cyclopaedia, 1878. 
Vol. II, 1155-1165.) 



504 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

19. Keane, A. H. Ethnography and Philology of America. (Ap- 

pendix to Bates's Central and South America. Stanford. 
London, 1878. pp. 443-561.) 

20. H. H. (Mrs. Jackson.) A Century of Dishonor. New York, 

1881. 

21. Ellis, George E. The Red Man and the White Man of 

North America. Boston, 1882. 

III. THE MISSIONS. 

1. Loskiel, Georg H. (a) Geschichte der Mission der Evan- 

gelische Briider unter den Indianern in Nordamerika. Bar- 
by, 1789. (b) History of the Missions, etc. (Translated 
by C. J. Latrobe. London, 1749.) 

2. Heckewelder, John. Narrative of the Missions of the 

United Brethren among the Delaware and Mohegan 
Tribes. Philadelphia, 1808. 

3. Holmes, John. Historical Sketches. Second edition. Lon- 

don, 1827. 

4. History of the Moravian Missions among the Indians of 

North America. London, 1838. 

5. Memorials of the Moravian Church. (Edited by W. C. 

Reichel. Philadelphia, 1870.) 

6. Memorials of the Dedication of Monuments, etc. New 

York and Philadelphia, 1860. 

7. Risler, Jeremias. Leben August G. Spangenberg. Barby, 

1794. pp. 109-158, 212-242, 273-363. 

8. Rondthaler, Ed ward. Life of John Heckewelder. Phila- 

delphia, 1847. 

9. Schweinitz, Edmund de. Life and Times of David Zeis- 

berger. Philadelphia, 1870. 
10. Fritschel, Gottlieb. Geschichte der Christian Missions 
unter den Indianern Nordamerikas. Nurenberg, 1870. 
pp. 147-176. 

IV. FOR THE YOUNG. 

1. Tschoop : The Converted Indian Chief. Philadelphia : 

American Sunday School Union. 

2. Sketches of Moravian Missions. Philadelphia: American 

Sunday School Union. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 505 

3. Anecdotes of Missionary Worthies of the Moravian Church. 

Philadelphia : American Sunday School Union. 

4. Mission-Bilder. Zweite Auf. Calw, 1877. Viertes Heft. 



LECTURES IX AND X. SOUTH AFRICA. 

I. BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

1. Murray. Hugh. Historical Account of Discoveries and 

Travels in Africa. 2 vols. Appendix. 

2. Ternaux-Compans, H. Bibliotheque Asiatique et Afri- 

caine; ou Catalogue des Ouvrages relatifs a l'Asie et 
a FAfrique qui ont paru depuis le decouverte de Fimpre- 
merie jusqu'au 1700. Paris, 1841. (Titles, 3,184; au- 
thors, 1,333.) 

3. Gay, Jean. Bibliographie de FAfrique et de F Arabic San 

Remo, Italie, 1875. (Relating to Africa, 3,347 titles; 
and yet far from complete.) 

4. Pritsch, Gustav. Die Eingeborenen Siid-Afrika's, Nebst 

einem Atlas. Breslau, 1872. Literatur, Angabe s. 510-12. 

II. country and people. 

1. Kolben, Peter. Present State of the Cape of Good Hope ; 

or, A Particular Account of the Hottentots, etc. (From 
the German, by Gindo Medley. Vol. H. London, 1731.) 

2. Lichtenstein, Henry. Travels in Southern Africa. (Prom 

the German, by Anne Plumtre. London, 1812. 2 vols.) 

3. Barrow, John. Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa. 

London, 1801. 2 vols. 

4. Campbell, John. Travels in South Africa. Andover, 

1816. 

5. Burchell, William. Travels in the Interior of Southern 

Africa. 2 vols. London, 1822. 

6. Thompson, George. Travels and Adventures in South 

Africa. 2 vols. London, 1827. 



506 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

7. Philip, John. Researches in South Africa. London, 1828. 

8. Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aborig- 

inal Tribes. London, 1837. 

9. Justus (pseudonym). Wrongs of the Caffire Nation. Lon- 

don, 1837. 

10. Pringle, Thomas. Narrative of a Residence in South 

Africa. London, 1842. 

11. Backhouse, James. Narrative of a Visit to Mauritius and 

South Africa. London, 1844. 

12. Grout, Lewis. The Izizulu : A Grammar of the Zulu 

Language. With an Historical Introduction. Natal 
and London, 1859. 

13. Chapman, James. Travels in the Interior of South Africa. 

2 vols. London, 1868. 

14. Wilmot, A., and Chase, John C. History of the Colony 

of the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town, 1869. 

15. Taylor, Bayard. Travels in South Africa. New York, 

1872. 

16. Noble, John. Researches in South Africa. London, 1877. 

17. D'Anvers, N. Heroes of South African Discovery. Lon- 

don, 1878. 

18. Johnson, Keith. Africa : Stanford's Compendium of Geog- 

raphy and Travel. London, 1878. 

19. Trollope, Anthony. South Africa. 2 vols. London, 1878. 

20. Cunnynghame, Arthur T. My Command in South Africa. 

London, 1877. 

21. Froude, James Anthony. Two Lectures on South Africa. 

London, 1860. 

III. THE MISSION. 

1. Commissioners' Report on the Hottentot Population and 

Missionary Institutions. Cape Town, 1838. 

2. Latrobe, C. J. Journal of a Visit to South Africa. Sec- 

ond edition. London, 1821. 

3. Missions in South Africa. Dublin Religious Tract and 

Book Society, 1832. 

4. Civilization and Christianization in South Africa. Edin- 

burgh, 1832. 



LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 507 

5. M'Carter, John. The Dutch Reformed Church in South 

Africa. Edinburgh, 1869. 

6. Rowley, Henry. Africa Unveiled. London, 1876. 

7. Moister, William. Africa — Past and Present. London, 

1879. 

8. Carlyle, J. E. South Africa and its Missions. London, 

1879. 

9. Pamphlets on Polygamy, (a) Remarks by John W. Co- 

lenso. Pietermaritzburg, 1855. (b) Reply by Lewis Grout. 
Pietermaritzburg, 1855. (c) An Answer by H. A. Wilder. 
Pietermaritzburg, 1855. (d) A Letter by Bishop Co- 
lenso. Pietermaritzburg, 1855. (e) Review of Bishop 
Colenso's Remarks. Durban, 1855. (f) Letters of H. 
Callaway. Durban, 1862. (g) Two Sermons by H. Cal- 
laway. Pietermaritzburg, 1866. (h) By Frederick A. 
Ross. Philadelphia, 1857. (i) Government Regulations. 
Pietermaritzburg, 1869. 

IV. FOR THE YOUNG. 

1. Adams, H. C. Hair-Breadth Escapes ; or, The Adventures 

of Three Boys in South Africa. London. 

2. Home in South Africa. London. Society for Promotion 

of Christian Knowledge. 

3. Charlie Douglas's Visit to a Mission Station. By a Sister 

of the late Bishop Mackenzie. 

4. The Gospel Among the Caffres. American Tract Society. 



LECTURE ELEVEN. AUSTRALIA. 

I. COUNTRY AND PEOPLE. 1 

1. Peron, M. F. Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Austra- 
les. 4 Tomes. Paris. 

i La quantity de documents publie sur l'Australie depuis Tasman jus- 
qu'au numero du 2 decembre, 1871, de 1' Australasian, de Melbourne, 
le dernier que j'aie lu, est vraiment prodigieuse. D'autres descriptions, 
et en nombre infmi, ont ete traces par Philipp, Tuckey, Collins, Barring- 



508 LITERATUKE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

2. Napier, Charles James. Colonization, Particularly in 

Southern Africa. London, 1835. 

3. Mitchell, T. L. Three Expeditions to the Interior of 

Australia. 2 vols. London, 1838. 

4. Backhouse, James. Visit to the Australian Colonies* Lon- 

don, 1843. 

5. Howitt, Richard. Impressions of Australia-Eelix. Lon- 

don, 1845. 

6. Wilkes, Charles. United States Exploring Expedition. 

Philadelphia, 1845. II, 155-277. 

7. Stokes, J. Lort. Discoveries in Australia. 2 vols. Lon- 

don, 1846. 

8. Hooker, Joseph Dalton. The Flora of Australia. London, 

1859. 

9. Unger, F. Neu-Holland in Europa. Wien, 1861. 

10. Hale, Horatio. United States Exploring Expedition. 

Philadelphia, 1864. pp. 106-116, 479-531. 

11. Major, R. H. Early Voyages to Terra Australis. London, 

1869. 

12. Marcet, Edward. Australie: Un Voyage k Travers le 

Bush. Geneve, 1868. 

13. De Beau voir, Le Comte. (a) Australie. Deux edition. 

Paris, 1869. (b) A Voyage Round the World. (Trans- 
lation by the Author. 2 vols. London, 1876.) 

14. Baden-Powell, George S. New Homes for the Old Coun- 

try. London, 1872. 

15. Ranken, W. H. L. The Dominion of Australia. London, 

1874. 

16. Trollope, Anthony. Explorations in Australia. London, 

1875. 

17. Forest, John. Explorations in Australia. London, 1875. 

18. Boothby, Josiah. Statistical Sketch of South Australia. 

London, 1876. 

ton, Peron, Flinders, Freycinet, King, Lesson, Hombron, Cunningham, 
Scott-Nind, Dawson, Wilkes, Hale, Bennet, Mitchell, Grey, Stokes, Eyre, 
Ho witt, Merritt, Hodgkinson, Mackenzie, Rudesindo, Earl, Stanbridge, 
Blandowski, Beveridge, Marcet, Wilhemi, Dunmore, Lang, Martin G. 
Lang, Jardine, Oldfield, Kennedy, Krefft, etc., etc. Topinard: Les Races 
Indigenes de V Australie, 38. 



LITERATUKE OF THE SUBJECTS. 509 

19. Eden, Charles H. The Fifth Continent. London, 1878. 

20. Wallace, A. R. Australasia. ( Stanford's Compendium of 

Geography and Travel. London, 1879.) 

21. Native Tribes of Australia. Woods, J. D. : Introductory 

Chapter. Taplin, George : The Narrinyeri. Wyatt, J. P. : 
The Adelaide Tribe. Meyer, A.: The Encounter Bay 
Company. Schumann, C. W. : The Port Lincoln Tribe. 
Gason, S. : The Dieyerie Tribe. Bennett, J. W. 0. : Vo- 
cabulary of Woolner District. 

II. THE MISSION. 

1. Taplin, George. The Narrinyeri. Adelaide, 1879. 

2. Waitz, Theodor (G. Gerland). Anthropologic der Natur- 

volker. YI, 820, 829. 

3. Missionsgeschichte in Heften. Evan. Biicherverein zu 

Berlin, 1869. s. 1-102. 

4. Algemeine Missions Zeitschrift. Drit. Band (1876). pp. 

401-406. 

5. Schneider, H. G. Missionsarbeit der Brudergemeine in 

Australien. Gnadau, 1882. 



LECTURE XII. RESUME AND CHAR- 
ACTERISTICS. 

1. (a) Gedenktage der ern. Briider-Kirche. Gnadau. (6) 

Memorial Days of the Bene wed Church. Ashton-under- 
Lyne, 1822. 

2. "Reichel, Levin T. Missions- Atlas der Briider-Unitat, 1860. 
8. (a) Das Missionswerk der evan. Brudergemeine. 2 Aus. 

Gnadau, 1861. (b) The Mission Work of the Church of 

the United Brethren. London, 1870. 
4. Die Heiden-Mission der Briider-Unitat. Gnadau, 1869. 
6. Periodical Accounts. Especially Vol. XXXII, Nos. 334, 

335. (The publication commenced in 1790.) 



510 LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECTS. 

6. Holmes, John. Historical Sketches of the Missions of the 

United Brethren. Second edition. London, 1827. 

7. Montgomery, James. Sketch of the Mission of the Church 

of the United Brethren. 

8. Missionary Manual and Directory. Bethlehem, 1875. 

9. Moravian Almanack. London, 32 Fetter Lane, 1871-1882. 

10. Instructions for Missionaries. Second edition. London, 

1840. 

11. Letter of Instruction to the Missionaries in the West 

Indies. Bethlehem, 1866. 

12. (a) Regulatio des Missions-Departments. 1867. (6) Regu- 

lations Issued by the Mission Department. 

13. Results of the General Synod of 1879. London, 1881. pp. 

109-148. 

14. Garbett, E. Past and Present Condition of the Moravian 

Missions. (A Lecture.) London, 1852. 

15. Sermons by (a) William Marsh, 1826 ; (6) John Stephenson, 

1847; (c) E. B. Elliott, 1854; (d) J. D. Libbey, 1872; (e) 
Henry Wright, 1873. 

16. Daily Prayers for Moravian Households. London, 32 Fet- 

ter Lane. 



INDEX. 



ABTENA, 156. 

Acawois, 130. 

Adams, Anne, 400. 

Adelaide, 431, 434, 435. 

Africa, 345-353. 

Africa, Central, 347. 

Africa, Northern, 352-353. 

Africa, South, 346, 353-377, 381-385. 

Africo, 356. 

Algiers, 457. 

Algonquins, 287. 

Annaszorg, 151. 

Amelia, Princess, 81. 

Antigua, 107-112. 

Anthony, a Delaware, 315-316. 

Anthony, a slave, 80. 

Anti-Reformation, 27. 

Arabi, 140-141. 

Arawaks, 131, 133, 135-136, 138, 185. 

Ardent Spirits, 326-327, 360, 432. 

Augsburg Confession, 8-9. 

Augustus the Strong, 48. 

Australia, 415-421, 427. 

Australians, 421-427. 

Azar, the, 353. 

Bambey, 141-142, 144. 

Bantu, 357, 397. 

Baptism of, children, 110. 

Baptisms, mercenary, 105. 

Barbados, 112-114. 

Barbarossa, 488. 

Barrow, Sir John, 386. 

Barsoe, 143. 

Barth, 351. 

Bauch, 144. 

Bautzen, 3, 80. 

Bavian's Kloof, 366-371. 

Belize, 160. 

Benkes, Hendrick, 399. 

Berbice, 133. 

Berg, J. T., 21. 

Berg-en-Dal, 143. 

Berkenhagen, Mrs., 473. 

Berthelsdorf, 5, 6, 10, 49. 

Bethlehem, 287. 

Bible, Bohemian, 26-27, 29, 31. 

Bible translations, 477-478. 

Bluefields, 159, 161. 



Boers, 369-370, 391-392. 

Bohemia, 22, 23, 461. 

Bohemian martyrs, 23-26. 

Bohler, Peter, 202, 309. 

Bonisch, Frederick, 176, 211, 253. 

Boomerang, 423. 

Brainerd, David, 202, 241, 268, 286, 

326, 337. 
Braun, Peter, 108, 110. 
Broos, 154. 
Briihl, Count, 64. 
Bucer, Martin, 14. 
Bunsen, Baroness, 20. 
Burgos, 168. 
Burns, W. C, 470. 
Bush Negroes, 136, 139-146, 158. 
Bushmen, 389-396. 
Butler, S. P., 247. 

Calmucks, 457. 

Cammerhoff, Bishop, 297, 309, 324. 

Campbell, Sir Colin, 469. 

Canterbury, Lord, 447. 

Capliz, Casper, 28. 

Carey, Wm., 73. 

Caribbean Sea, 164-166. 

Caribs, 131, 136, 138, 158, 166. 

Carpenter, Charles C, 247-248. 

Central Asia, 455. 

Ceylon, 457. 

Chalmers, Dr. T., 486-487. 

Charles XII, 43. 

Charlottenburg, 149. 

Cherokees, 341. 

Children, 208. 

China, 457. 

Cholera, Asiatic, 113. 

Christian VI, 71, 80. 

Christians, titled, 74. 

Christiana, an Eskimo, 203. 

Christiana, an Indian, 337. 

Church festivals, 17. 

Civilization, 310-312, 408-410, 444- 

447. 
Coffee-plant, 132. 
Columbus, 82, 95, 166. 
Comenius, Amos, 12, 18-19, 29-30. 
Commandoes, 392-394. 
Conestoga Manor, 334. 

(511) 



512 



INDEX, 



Conference, Unity's Elders', 10. 

Converts, 91, 93-95, 98-99, 105-106, 
114, 117-118, 134-135, 144-146, 
147, 149, 154-156, 163-164, 203- 
208, 236-244, 319-325, 335, 356, 
360-361, 367-369, 372-374, 400- 
401, 442-443. 

Conviction of Sin, 87-88, 320, 372- 
373. 

Convicts, 430-431, 438. 

Cook, Captain, 420, 422. 

Coolies, 149. 

Cornelius, 91, 93-94. 

Cottika, 136. 

Croger, Bishop, 6. 

Bahne, 132, 137-138. 

Daily Word, 182-183. 

Danes, 249-250. 

David, Christian, 32-34, 52, 177. 

Deaths by violence, 482. 

Delawares, 289, 325. 

Delusion, 208-209, 317-318. 

Demarara, 131, 150. 

Denke, Christian, 477. 

De Schweinitz, Bishop Edmund, 6. 

De Schweinitz, L. D., 21. 

Devotional habits, 478-480. 

Diamonds, 383. 

Diaspora, 459-461. 

Dickadick, 442. 

Dober, Leonhard, 72, 80-85, 94. 

Doddridge, Philip, 50. 

Dogs, 220-221, 231. 

Drachart, 226. 

D' Urban, Sir Benjamin, 399-401, 

403. 
Dutch, the, 354, 361-363, 391-395, 

404. 
Dying out, 449. 

Easter, 17-18. 

East Indies, 457, 

Ebenezer, 429, 442, 447. 

Echpalawchund, 316. 

Education, Moravian, 18-20. 

Egede, 176, 178, 182. 

Egypt, 458. 

Ehrhardt, J. C, 222-224. 

Elim, 306. 

Eisner, 235. 

Emancipation, 100-101, 111. 

Embarrassments, 230-232, 248-250, 

326-332, 338, 402, 427-428, 430- 

432, 467. 
English Language, 163. 
Enon, 398, 402. 
Ephraim, 136. 
Episcopal Seal, 464. 
Episcopate, Moravian, 11-13. 
Eskimos, 183-186, 219-221, 228, 231- 

232, 245, 250-251, 259-261. 



Example influential, 482-483, 488. 

Fabrictus, George, 304, 333. 
Fairfield, 292, 313, 332, 340. 
Famine, 231. 
Ferdinand II, 27. 
Fetkannas, 399. 
Fingoes, 399. 
Franke, 43, 44, 68. 
Franklin, Captain, 262. 
Frederick William, 64. 
Friedenhiitten, 289-290. 
Friederichsthal, 211-212. 
Fulneck, 32. 

Gambier, Admiral Lord, 256, 

485. 
Game, 384. 
Gansee, 143. 
Garbett, Rev. E.,487. 
Gardelin, Governor, 84. 
Gelelemend, 317. 
Genadendal, 371, 386-387, 396. 
Geographical irony, 217. 
Gersdorf , Baroness von, 42-43. 
Gideon, 283. 
Gifts, large, 96-97. 
Gingee, 144. 
Gippsland, 429, 432. 
Glaciers, 181-182. 
Glikkikan, 315, 322. 
Gnadenhutten, 207, 290-291, 333, 

339. 
Goedverwacht, 396. 
Goejaba, 152, 154. 
Goschgoschiink, 290. 
Great men, 41. 
Greenland, 179-182, 217. 
Greenland, mission to, 175, 248 255. 
Groenekloof, 371-372. 
Gross- Hennersdorf (see Henners- 

dorf.) 
Grube, Adam, 305. 
Guiana, 128-132. 
Guinea, 458. 

Hagenaur, 432. 

Hallbeck, 477. 

Hamilton, Charles, 467-468. 

Harmony (the packet), 257-259. 

Hartmann, Mrs., 143-144. 

Haselius, E. L., 21. 

Haven, Jens, 224-230. 

Hebron, 230. 

Helpers, native, 91-98, 237, 283, 399. 

Heckewelder, John, 294-296. 

Hehl, Matthew, 293. 

Hemel-en-Aarde, 387. 

Hendrick, 297. 

Hengstenberg, 21. 

Hennersdorf, 33, 42-43. 

Heroism, 225. 



INDEX. 



513 



Herrnhut, archives, 4 ; Brethren's 
House, 4 ; cemetery, 5 ; de- 
scribed, 3; evening service, 7; 
founded, 34 ; Hutberg, 5 ; Sis- 
ters' House, 4 ; small, 36, 79; 
Wesley's visit, 58, 202. 

Hidden Seed, the, 31. 

Hill, Rowland, 168. 

Hochkirch, 3. 

Hochwald, 22. 

Hodge, Arthur, 120. 

Hoffenthal (Hopedale), 218, 229, 241, 
243. 

Hoop, 138-139. 

Hottentots, 356-360, 363-365, 372, 
390. 

Housatonic, 282. 

Hudson's Bay Companv, 184, 221- 
222. 

Huguenots, 362, 383. 

Hungary, 31. 

Huntingdon, Countess, 74. 

Huron-Iroquois, 287. 

Huse, 461. 

Hutberg, 5, 35, 72. 

Hymns, 110, 208. 

Icebergs, 181-182, 219. 
Improvidence, 250-251. 
Indians, characteristics, 267-269, 

272. 326; Christianized, 3J9-325; 

hatred, 332 ; languages, 267-271 ; 

massacred, 333-338; missions 

among, 273-276 ; numbers, 271 ; 

religion, 272 ; wars, 329-334. 
Insurrections, 91, 99, 114. 
Iroquois, 288-289. 
Isles, Samuel, 107-108. 

Jabloxsky, Bishop, 12. 
Jackson, Bishop, 112. 
Jaschke, George, 32-33. 
Jaschke, missionary, 456, 477. 
Jamaica, 95-97. 
Jansen, Governor, 370. 
Jesenius, 23. 

Johnson, Sir William, 326. 
Jungmann, J. G., 305. 

Kafirs, 397-400. 
Kaietur falls, 129. 
Kaiarnak, 198-201. 
Kalkoen, 145-146. 
Karpik, 236, 441. 
Kane, Dr.. 213, 260. 
Karroos, 385. 
Kaunaumeek, 286. 
Kent, 282-283. 
Keposh, 317. 
King, John, 145-146. 
Kleinschmidt, 477-478. 
Kluge, J. P., 305. 



Kmoch, George, 253. 
Koffy Camp, 143, 156. 
Kohlmeister, B. G., 253-254. 
Kohrammer, 370. 
Koi-Koin (see Hottentots). 
Konigsfeld, 487. 
Koniggratz, 23, 28. 
Kraal, 359. 
Kyelang, 144, 455. 

Labrador, 217. 

Large gifts, 483. 

Lapland, 458. 

Las Casas, 168. 

Latrobe, Joseph, 427. 

Lawunakhannek, 315. 

Lebart, 155. 

Ledyard, 469. 

Leitner, 388. 

Leper Hospital, 387-389, 446, 459. 

Leprosy, 147. 

Leupofd, Tobias, 72, 85. 

Liberality, 117, 207. 

Lichtenau, 211, 252. 

Lichtenfels, 211. 

Lichten stein, Dr., 387, 405. 

Liebisch, Samuel, 224-225, 234. 

Literarv labors, 477-478. 

Longevity, 253-255, 305. 

Loos, Otto von, 28. 

Loskiel, 309. 

Love for souls, 468-469. 

Loyola, 67. 

Lukenbach, A., 477. 

Luther, Martin, 13. 

Machiwihilttsing, 290, 312. 

Harare, 372, 396. 

Mapasa, 401. 

Marsden, Samuel, 433. 

Marsveld, Henry, 402. 

Martin, Frederick, 87. 

Martin, Sir W., 246. 

Marty n, Henry, 370-371. 

Massacres, 333-338. 

Matilda, Princess, 161. 

Mather, Cotton, 270. 

Mayhews, 274. 

Mechanical arts, 404. 

Melbourne, 421, 431. 

Michael, 339. 

Mikak, 227. 

Mills, S. J., 254. 

Missionaries in prison, 85-86 ; per- 
secuted, 87 ; love their work, 88. 

Missionary : auxiliary societies, 474, 
483-484 ; cheerfulness, 210, 295- 
296, 300, 472; children, 473; 
cities, 474 ; comity, 467-468 ; 
consecration, 73; defeats, 484; 
economy, 474-476 ; embarrass- 
ments, 151-154, 162, 338 ; growth, 



33 



514 



INDEX, 



465-466; heroism, 225, 300-302; 
longevity, 305 ; modesty, 471- 
472 ; perils, 137, 142, 152, 210- 
211, 233-235, 295, 299 ; secular 
service, 294-302 ; self-denial, 
298 ; spirit, 464, 488 ; successes, 
170-171, 338-339 ; trials, 228, 284- 
286; 436; vessels, 256-259. 

Missions aided from without, 483- 
485. 

Mistakes, 89, 97-98. 

Mohammedans, 348, 353. 

Montgomery, James, 258. 

Montgomery, John, 114, 116. 

Monseys, 298, 300, 312, 325. 

Monthly Concert, 479. 

Moral earnestness, 205-207. 

Moravianism, 317. 

Moravians: Ancient church, 24-31, 
at the Reformation, 26; Bucer's 
opinion, 14 ; Christian festivals, 
17; church polity, 10; comity, 
467-468 ; customs, 7 ; discipline, 
13; diverse elements, 51-52; 
early evangelistic elements, 463- 
464; early martyrs, 25-28; East- 
er, 17-18 ; Episcopate, 11-13 ; 
finances, 473-474; in England, 
57, 58; in Georgia, 276-277; 
Luther's opinion, 13 ; maligned, 
321, 405-407 ; martyrs, 25-28, 102; 
missionary growth, 465-466 ; 
missionary spirit, 36-37. 464; 
missionary zeal, 121-123;' per- 
secutions, 25-31; perseverance, 
411 ; preach Christ, 9 ; priva- 
tions, 357 ; readiness for ser- 
vice, 469-470 ; religious belief, 
8-9; religious life, 15-17; reli- 
gious regimen, 49-50; revival, 
33-35; ritual, 15; schools, 18-20; 
temperament, 7 ; the " Hidden 
Seed," 31; their center, 6; three 
provinces, 10, 25; the sifting 
period, 55-57; trials sanctified, 
37; unostentatious, 471; Zin- 
zendorf's influence, 49. 

Mortality, 91-92, 113, 116, 122, 142, 
144, 148-149. 

Mosquito Coast, 157-161, 163. 

Murray River, 415. 

Nain, 227, 328. 

Napier, Lieutenant-Colonel, 406- 

407. 
Nascopies, 219. 
Nathaniel, 442. 
Native assistants, 140, 251-252, 313- 

317. 
Natives dying out, 259. 438-439. 
Negroes maltreated, 86. 
Neissers, 33-34. 



Netawatwes, 316. 

New Gnadenhutten, 292, 311, 328. 

New Herrnhut, 203, 211, 252. 

New Salem, 310-311, 313, 329. 

Nicodemus, 314. 

Nitschmann, Anna, 310. 

Nitschmann, David, 80, 84, 177, 182, 

309. 
Nitschmann, Martin, 333. 
Nitschmann, Susanna, 333. 
Nominal Christians, unprincipled, 

327. 

Oglethorpe, General, 296. 
Okak, 229-231, 245-246. 
Olshausen, 21. 
Onondaga, 297. 
Orange River, 382. 

Pachgatgoch, 282. 

Papunhank, 318. 

Paramaribo, 135, 146, 149-150, 154, 

156. 
Parksaut, 241. 
Paxnous, 319. 
Persecution, 461-462. 
Persia, 457. 
Pfeiffer, 100. 
Pilgerhut, 133-134. 
Pless, Count von, 89, 178. 
Potatick, 282, 
Porteus, Bishop, 486. 
Power of the Cross, 198-200. 
Prayer-day, 323. 
Prayer Union, 479-480. 
Preachers, lay, 66. 
Pringle, Thomas, 392. 
Proselytism, 463, 466-468. 
Prostau, 28. 
Prostiborsky, John, 27. 
Providential preservation, 295, 299- 

300, 481. 
Pyrlaeus, 288, 293, 297, 304. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 129. 
Ramah, 164, 230. 
Ramahyuck, 429, 445-446. 
Rauch, Christian Henry, 278-281, 

294- 
Reichel, Bishop L. T., 6. 
Results, 212-213, 244-247, 259-261, 

402-404, 411, 429, 440-447. 
Revivals, 33, 35, 53, 69, 101-102, 109- 

110, 163-164, 241-244, 312-313, 386. 
Richter, Ehrenfried, 457. 
Rimius, 60. 
Robben Island, 387. 
Roman Catholics, 153, 161. 
Ronneberg, 52. 
Ryland, Dr., 73. 

Salem, 311. 



INDEX. 



515 



Salisbury, 282. 

Samoyedes, 458. 

Saramacca, 140, 144. 

Savages, 127-128. * 

Scatticokes, 283. 

Schaffer, 72, 460. 

Schebosh, Josepb, 335. 

Schleiermacher, 21. 

Schlick, Andreas, 27. 

Schmick, J. J., 293, 304. 

Schmidt, Erasmus, 142. 

Schmidt, George, 354-355, 360-361, 

365-366. 
Schmit, 402. 

Schonbrun, 291, 811, 330. 
Schumann, 135. 
Schneider, Daniel, 211. 
Schwanberg, Baron von, 25. 
Scripture translated, 235-236. 
Secular occupations, 485. 
Seiffert, Anthony, 276. 
Self-help, 250. 
Seminary, Theological, 103. 
Senfkorn-Orden, 68-72. 
Sensemann, Mrs., 333. 
Sergeant, John, 275, 355. 
Shamokin, 289. 
Sharon, 136, 282. 
Shekomeko, 278-281, 236. 
Shikellimv, 316. 
Shiloh, 398, 410. 
Sigsigak, 238. 

Slavery, 107, 119-121, 130, 150, 348. 
Slave-trade, 100, 119, 168-170, 348- 

352, 362. 
Smith, Sir Harry, 401, 410. 
Sommelsdyke, 148. 
Sonderend, 404. 
Southey, Captain, 121. 
Southey, Robert, 57. 
Spangenberg, Bishop, 104, 256, 276, 

369, 485. 
Spaniards, 167-168. 
Spener, 42-43, 45, 52. 
Spiritual coincidences, 201. 
Spiritual experience, 203-207. 
Spring-place, 341. 
Stach, Matthew, 176-178, 473. 
St. Christopher's, 103-106, 122. 
St. Croix, 85, 89-92. 
St. John, 92. 
St. Thomas, 72, 82. 
Stanley, Lord, 450. 
Stolberg, Countess, 81. 
Stoll, Rudolph, 142. 
Stompjes, Wilhelmina, 400. 
Stowell, Sir William, 445. 
Success, 448. 
Surinam, 132, 135, 139. 
Synod, General, 10. 

Talleyband, 254-255. 



Tambookies, 398. 

Taplin, George, 424, 440. 

Tappe, 459. 

Tasmania, 439. 

Tessier, Governor, 147. 

Thibet, 455-456. 

Thibetan, 450. 

Tholuck, Professor, 66. 

Threlkeld, 434. 

Tobacco, 233. 

Tobago, 115-117. 

Tornadoes, 114, 159. 

Training-schools, 103, 396. 

Trollope, Anthony, 171, 447-448. 

Tschoop, 278-281. 

Turner, 234. 

Tuscarawas, Valley of, 291, 335. 

Ungava Bay, 244. 
Unitas Fratrum (see Moravians). 
United Brethren (see Moravians). 
Unsuccessful missions, 457-458. 

Va:nt>erkemp, 405-406. 
Vanity, national, 185. 
Van Riebeck, Governor, 363. 
Victoria Regia, 129. 
Virgin Islands, 83, 93-94, 96. 
Von Canstein, 43, 47. 
Voyages, 89. 

Walde^ses, 12, 462. 

Warrows, 130, 138. 

Warte, Die, 292. 

Watteville, Frederick von, 69. 

Watteville, Joannes von, 170, 310. 

Wechquadnach, 282, 286. 

Wechquetank, 290, 334. 

"Week of Prayer, 245. 

Wesley, Charles, 202. 

Wesley, John, 45, 57-60, 202-203. 

West indies, 79, 82-83, 119-122, 165- 

171. 
Wetterau, 71. 
Wetterhold, Captain, 334. 
W"hitak 2S? 

Whiteneld,~45, 58-59, 202, 286. 
Whitefield House, 287. 
White Eyes, 309. 
Whitelev, Henry, 120. 
White River, 341. 
Wilberforce, Wm., 121, 409, 486. 
Wimmera, William, 441. 
Women, 239-240, 423-424, 429-430. 
Wyoming, Valley of, 310, 330. 

Zetsbekger, 289, 296-305, 310, 313, 
318, 327, 330, 339, 477. 

Ziegenbalg, 354. 

Zinzendorf , Count, 9, 15, 33, 462 ; 
as author, 60, 61 ; as hymn- 
writer, 61 ; as preacher, 54-55 ; 



516 



INDEX. 



at Halle, 44 ; at St. John, 85-86; 
at Paris, 46; at Utrecht, 46 ; at 
Wittenberg, 44, 45; calumni- 
ated, 63-64 ; Christian activity, 
53-54; Christian firmness, 47, 
63 ; councilor and educator, 49 ; 
devotion to Christ, 66-67 ; early 
missionary zeal, 67-69, 74; early 
piety, 43, 44 ; early travels, 46 ; 
formative influence, 51-52; gen- 
eral warden, 51-52; industry, 
62; in North America, 310; 



marriage, 69-71 ; mission to 
Greenland, 175-176 ; motto, 67 ; 
ordination and ministry, 51-52 ; 
parentage, 42 ; pecuniary af- 
fairs, 62 ; purchases Berthels- 
dorf , 49 ; sifting period, 55-57 ; 
the Saxon Court, 48 ; vindi- 
cated, 65 ; Zinzendorf and Wes- 
ley compared, 59-60. 

Zoar, 230. 

Zondereinde, 356, 404. 



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